Final on the Tax Levy - WHEW!
Up to the end when we finally approved this years tax levy on Monday, December 19, we had some lively discussion. Perhaps you could catch it on Channel 19 this or next week.
Denny Hanson made a last minute suggestion to hold off until July on 6 of the new hires we approved which would have cut another $208,554. Loved the idea but not the timing.
We had to vote against this in spite of wanting very badly to make the cut. The department heads making these requests did so after working short-handed in some cases since 2002. We discussed each request in detail at our previous week's hearing and made the decision to approve these positions. Wouldn't have if they weren't needed and so to now delay them for six months without a chance to discuss the impact with the department heads wasn't, in my mind and several of the others, the responsible thing to do. Unfortunately we couldn't postpone the approval decision until further discussion.
We scrubbed through the 245 pages of detail department by department for three days last week. This was after our city administrator worked for the last three MONTHS with each department head to make a recommendation that would fit within our projected tax levy of $36,000,000. Be glad to discuss anything in it you think we could have done better. We could only scrape a bit over $314,000 from the proposed levy.
For those of you who saw outrageous increases in your property tax I suggest you first look at how much your assessed valuation went up. The state directed the county to bring the valuation up to par since they felt many residential and commercial properties were under-valued. They did this with the resultant "tax shock". There was much said about lowering our tax levy to correct for this but it's not possible. Denny has suggested and we all agree to form a working group to address the complicated state property tax process this year.
If you think your assessment is too high you can contact the county at the number that will be provided on your tax statement. You can also bring your case to the city's Board of Equalization (I chair it this year). There's also the State's "Circuit Breaker" program for residential properties to address fairness by either income or property increase over a certain %.
I asked our city finance director to crunch some numbers for us. If we used last year's tax of $32 M (0% increase) the effect on a $175,000 residence that saw a 40% increase to $245,000 would have reduced their 57% tax increase to 52% or $104 for the year. They would have still had to pay $1055 more to live in their house.
Another way to look at this is the end result of reducing our tax levy by $1,000,000.
FOr every million $$$ your tax bill would be reduced by .9% for residential and .6% commercial or about $20 for the average resident.I'm not saying that $20 isn't important to you and me but try to think of the number of street repairs, police, fire, and other services that would have to go to save this amount.
We did manage to cut the proposed estimate to an 8.5% increase from last year. Taking into account the city growth of 4.5% which is real and we have to add services for and we're left with 4.0% which is just about right on target for the cost of living.
In summary, we had a pretty grueling week, made some tough decisions to balance providing services to you that we feel you want and yet keep the $$$ down as much as possible, and hope that we can do better for next year.
Denny Hanson made a last minute suggestion to hold off until July on 6 of the new hires we approved which would have cut another $208,554. Loved the idea but not the timing.
We had to vote against this in spite of wanting very badly to make the cut. The department heads making these requests did so after working short-handed in some cases since 2002. We discussed each request in detail at our previous week's hearing and made the decision to approve these positions. Wouldn't have if they weren't needed and so to now delay them for six months without a chance to discuss the impact with the department heads wasn't, in my mind and several of the others, the responsible thing to do. Unfortunately we couldn't postpone the approval decision until further discussion.
We scrubbed through the 245 pages of detail department by department for three days last week. This was after our city administrator worked for the last three MONTHS with each department head to make a recommendation that would fit within our projected tax levy of $36,000,000. Be glad to discuss anything in it you think we could have done better. We could only scrape a bit over $314,000 from the proposed levy.
For those of you who saw outrageous increases in your property tax I suggest you first look at how much your assessed valuation went up. The state directed the county to bring the valuation up to par since they felt many residential and commercial properties were under-valued. They did this with the resultant "tax shock". There was much said about lowering our tax levy to correct for this but it's not possible. Denny has suggested and we all agree to form a working group to address the complicated state property tax process this year.
If you think your assessment is too high you can contact the county at the number that will be provided on your tax statement. You can also bring your case to the city's Board of Equalization (I chair it this year). There's also the State's "Circuit Breaker" program for residential properties to address fairness by either income or property increase over a certain %.
I asked our city finance director to crunch some numbers for us. If we used last year's tax of $32 M (0% increase) the effect on a $175,000 residence that saw a 40% increase to $245,000 would have reduced their 57% tax increase to 52% or $104 for the year. They would have still had to pay $1055 more to live in their house.
Another way to look at this is the end result of reducing our tax levy by $1,000,000.
FOr every million $$$ your tax bill would be reduced by .9% for residential and .6% commercial or about $20 for the average resident.I'm not saying that $20 isn't important to you and me but try to think of the number of street repairs, police, fire, and other services that would have to go to save this amount.
We did manage to cut the proposed estimate to an 8.5% increase from last year. Taking into account the city growth of 4.5% which is real and we have to add services for and we're left with 4.0% which is just about right on target for the cost of living.
In summary, we had a pretty grueling week, made some tough decisions to balance providing services to you that we feel you want and yet keep the $$$ down as much as possible, and hope that we can do better for next year.
posted by Bob Nowicki | 9:41 AM
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