Thanks to growth, Denton County officials say, next year’s budget should be able to pay for a 4 percent raise for county workers, add 35 more employees to the payroll, and fund a substantial increase in road and bridge repairs without raising taxes.

County budget employees presented a recommended $181.2 million budget to the county commissioners Tuesday afternoon.

Commissioners would have to adopt a tax rate of $0.23490 per $100 valuation in order to fund next year’s budget, which is slightly lower than this year’s rate of $0.23589 per $100. That means county taxes for a $200,000 property would decrease about $2, from $471.78 to $469.80.

Even though recent economic troubles have made it difficult for other governmental entities to collect delinquent taxes, tax collection in Denton County has kept pace this year, County Tax Assessor-Collector Steve Mossman said Monday in an interview.

County Auditor James Wells told the commissioners Tuesday that they could expect comparable collections next year — which have been 98.8 percent of taxes owed three of the last four years.

“The outside economic conditions don’t seem to affect our collections,” Wells said.

Budget Director Donna Stewart told the commissioners that more than half the additional $10.4 million in revenue expected next year would come from new properties and higher valuations of current properties.

Among new expenses, county department heads had requested 72 new positions for next year. The budget office recommended that commissioners agree to hire 35 more employees.

“I’m glad you’re sitting down,” Stewart told commissioners. “Most of them — 24 — are going to the jail expansion.”

Other positions were needed to handle the additional demand for services, particularly the juvenile probation caseload, at the Sandy Jacobs Government Center in Carrollton.

Commissioner Ron Marchant made a special request to lease additional space in Carrollton as well.

“We’ve already outgrown it,” Marchant said.

The recommended budget proposed an across-the-board increase of 4 percent for all county employees, including elected officials. It also proposed that 48 of the 110 requests for equity pay adjustments be granted.

The budget did not include equity adjustments for law enforcement and information services employees, although county leaders have been discussing for some time how to increase the pay for those two groups of employees to market levels.

Marchant asked that the information on those two groups be provided, because he felt he couldn’t compare priorities without it.

Commissioner Bobbie Mitchell was skeptical of the personnel needs, given the employment market overall and the opportunity to lower taxes.

“We probably have enough employees in certain areas,” Mitchell said.

Judge Mary Horn pointed out that the county has typically had a low number of employees per capita, compared to other counties.

“But at some point in time, services suffer — that’s a fine line there,” Horn said.

At the urging of the county’s bonding agency, Wells also presented a five-year forecast — through 2013. This was the first time commissioners could see how the decisions they’ve made the past five years would look like in the next five years.

Overall, the report showed the county progressing at a conservative pace, especially in the number of county employees per capita.

“It’s not a crystal ball,” Wells said. “But it shows we’re not digging a particular hole we can’t get out of.”