Gloucester County Administrator Brent Fedors is proposing a 1.5-cent increase on the county’s real estate tax rate in order to fund what he considers to be a “bare bones” county budget for fiscal year 2018.

Fedors presented his budget to the Gloucester County Board of Supervisors Tuesday night in the colonial courthouse. The board will now deliberate in the coming weeks on how it plans to balance the proposed $63.99 million general fund operating budget, which is up $1.6 million from the current year’s budget.

If the proposed rate increase is adopted by the board next month, it would change the county’s real estate tax rate from 69.5 cents per $100 of assessed value to 71 cents per $100 of assessed value. Last year, the board voted to raise the real estate tax rate by 1.5 cents from the 68-cent rate of fiscal year 2016.

A 1.5-cent increase, Fedors said, would cost the average homeowner in the county an additional $27.32 per year on their real estate tax...