Wednesday marks the last opportunity for residents to tell their council representatives how they feel about the city’s budget for the next fiscal year and all the tax adjustments the council has pushed to help pay for the planned expenses in that budget before the council votes to enact it.
Although it’s not uncommon to see residents gripe about city services and taxes on various social media platforms, not one single person stepped forward, either in person or virtually, to comment during last Tuesday’s council meeting on the proposed $172.6 million budget, the largest in the city’s history by far, that includes, according to the city’s own verbiage, “authorizing a 6 percent increase in water service rates, no changes in wastewater service rates, no changes in storm drainage fees, a 2.51 percent increase in solid waste service charges … capital improvement program expenditures, (and the) addition of 23 new full-time positions.”
The second of the two required budget public hearings takes place at City Hall shortly after 7 p.m., Wednesday for anyone who wants one last chance to comment on how the city plans to spend taxpayer funds before the budget ordinance is finally passed later in the meeting. Between now and then you can take a gander at all the documents you will need to learn all about the budget by clicking here and going to the bottom of this page to access any and all of those attachments listed. Hint: the most important part of the budget is the General Fund, the budget for which this upcoming fiscal year is $34.3 million, which accounts for all the day-to-day municipal operations and maintenance.
Because of an increase in property valuations, the city plans to lower the property tax rate 2.3 percent, from the current $.5201 per $100 assessed valuation to $.5082. A separate public hearing is scheduled on the subject of this proposed tax rate and will immediately follow the public hearing on the proposed budget.
The budget originally forecast collecting $12.6 million in sales taxes during the upcoming fiscal year, which is considerably higher — $2.1 million higher, to be precise — than the city is on a pace to collect this year. Not only that, during last week’s meeting, the council voted to raise that anticipated sales tax total in the upcoming budget by $378,038 to finance the addition of four police officers and two leased police pursuit vehicles.
No comments:
Post a Comment