HONESDALE, PA — For the third consecutive year, Wayne County’s property tax millage rate will remain level.

That was the thrust of county business manager John Haggerty’s November 20 presentation of Wayne’s $30,513,407.57 appropriations budget for 2015.

The zero increase was achieved despite a $540,000 increase in overall spending, which was matched by an equivalent increase in other, non-tax revenues, Haggerty said.

The budget’s “most significant changes” in expenses came in the Human Services departments.

“Although the county’s participation in the Human Services Block Grant program has provided the ability to shift funding within preapproved cost centers, total funding reductions in these areas have passed costs for mandated services onto the counties across the commonwealth,” Haggerty wrote.

“While we’ve been singing the praises of block grants, we’ve been receiving fewer and fewer dollars,” Commissioner Wendell Kay said.

He noted that the county share of the Children and Youth Services budget was between 19% and 21% in past, and has now increased to 24%.

Human services director Andrea Whyte has echoed the apparent paradox several times in her reporting, noting basically that while the block grants provide much needed flexibility in her use of state funding, the program has at the same time reduced the overall amount of state funding by 10%.

Commissioners’ chair Brian Smith said while human services and corrections costs increased, the budget was balanced “by savings in other areas.”

The budget will be available for public viewing at the commissioners’ office and online through December 18, when a final adoption vote is scheduled.

In other business, on November 20, the commissioners heard an annual report from Pocono Mountain Vacation Bureau Executive Director Carl Wilgus.