JANESVILLE — The Rock County Board got its first glimpse Thursday night of the proposed 2026 county budget.
It’s a 500-plus-page document with $244 million proposed to be spent.
The details of the proposed budget will be further laid out at a public meeting Tuesday, Sept. 30, in Courtroom H at the Rock County Courthouse, 51 S. Main St., Janesville, at 5:30 p.m.
If approved, $244 million in spending would be about a 2% increase over the 2025 approved budget of $238.8 million. If approved as is, the tax rate would be $3.94, which would equate to a $1,182 tax bill on a $300,000 home. That would be a 0.0002% tax rate increase over 2025.
In a letter and presentation to board members on Thursday night, County Administrator John Light offered highlights of the proposed budget, including a 68.7% increase over 2025 for capital projects, up from about $4.9 million to about $12.1 million.
The capital projects include road construction.
“This is an investment in the future, things like roads that businesses need, that you travel down to go to and from work. School buses, etc. Those are things we will have in our community for 30 years,” Light said.
Light is asking for $2.8 million for construction and maintenance on County Highway J from Avalon Road to County Highway O, $1.5 million for County Highway O from Janesville to U.S. Highway 14 and $600,000 for County Highway M from M-H Townline Road to State Highway 59. Light recommends funding the projects in 2026 by borrowing.
According to Light’s letter, transportation projects and park amenities are “critical to economic development, quality of life and public safety.”
Debt
The county’s total outstanding debt as of Dec. 31, 2025, will be about $129 million.
Light is proposing decreasing debt service by $1.2 million, or 7.9%, to about $14.5 million. To do this, he proposes applying $1 million in sales tax.
In his letter, Light said the board’s practice in recent years of allocating one-time funds to reduce debt as a way to reduce taxes is “not a sustainable practice” and may result in a lowering of the county’s bond rating.
The board used $5.6 million in one-time funds to pay down debt and reduce taxes in 2023, $4.8 million in 2024 and $1.9 million in 2025.
He also highlighted Rock Haven, the county-owned nursing home, in his letter.
Light proposes to reduce the tax levy on Rock Haven to about $1.5 million in 2026, continuing a trend of the previous two years.
In 2024, use of the tax levy to operate the facility was reduced by $1 million because of a significant Medicaid rate increase. In 2025, the need was significantly reduced again, he wrote, because Medicaid rates were significantly increased as “the federal government continues to increase funding for long-term care.”
“Rock Haven is an enterprise fund. Historically, money has been routed from the levy to Rock Haven. What is proposed in this year’s budget will follow the recent trend of reducing the recommended tax levy for Rock Haven,” Light wrote in the letter, adding that savings can be used elsewhere in the budget.
Light’s budget also asks for an increase of 0.3% for staffing.
Light said the budget will be uploaded to the county website at on Friday.
Individual department budgets will be reviewed by governing committees throughout October, leading up to a public hearing on the entire budget on Oct. 30.
The county board has until Oct. 30 to issue budget appeals so they can be submitted to the finance committee when it meets on Nov. 6. The budget is to be adopted on Nov. 12 at the county board’s annual meeting at 6 p.m. at the courthouse.
