Logan County receives million$

Logan County’s Board of Commissioners tackled the question Tuesday of what to do with nearly $5 million it has in the bank from the dissolution of the Logan County Water Conservation District.

No decision was made but the commissioners did confirm that some of the money will go toward maintaining a flood warning system in the Pawnee Creek basin. Board Chairman Jerry Sonnenberg raised the possibility of using some of the funds to improve monitoring other flood-prone areas long the South Platte.

County Treasurer Patty Bartlett told the commissioners that funds from the defunct district may trickle in for several years as delinquent taxes are paid on properties around the county.

The water conservation district was dissolved earlier this year after its board of directors decided it would be impossible to realize its original goal of damming Pawnee Creek.

The district was formed in 1998 after flooding of the creek resulted in inundation of much of south Sterling. The original plan was to erect a dam across Pawnee Creek in the area of Pawnee Pass west of Sterling to contain any future flooding. The hope was that the dam would prevent a repeat of the 1997 flood and allow properties in Sterling to be removed from the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency’s flood plain map.

After studies were done of the feasibility of the dam, however, the district board members realized that financing such a dam would cause unreasonably high property taxes in the county. Instead, the district authorized the construction of a system of eight monitoring stations in the Pawnee Basin to provide officials time to mitigate flooding damage. That left $4.8 million in collected tax revenues in the district’s cof

fers, which was turned over to Logan County in November.

For now, the funds will remain “in limbo” in the county coffers, but the commissioners have until the end of the year to decide how to list the funds in the 2024 budget.

The dissolution of the district also means a reduction of 1 mill on property tax bills across the county. The commissioners had decided in November to reduce the county’s 29.868 mill levy by .679 mills to try to hold down soaring property taxes.