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Budget workshop
For help in understanding how your property taxes work, click HERE.
The previous council heavily pushed the franchise tax and the EDA tax increase. Neither of which was included in calculating the tax rate that was being advertised. Lovely huh? While running for mayor, it became obvious to me the city was incorrectly calculating the tax rate. The EDA tax SHOULD have been included in the rate. So this year you're going to see two sets of numbers, the correct tax rate and the incorrect one (for reference).
I personally think the franchise tax should be included also, but there's no way to incorporate it since it's not proportional to your property value. So it stays a hidden tax.
Regarding the tax levy, I have maintained for years that the levy should be set at what we NEED to spend, not what we CAN spend. Trying to reign that in from the habits the previous council created is difficult. As with a lot of workshops, you need to watch it to get all the details, but the bottom line is I believe we need to continue to push this city to find ways to reduce its appetite. In the past 5 years we have added 50% more houses. In those same years our tax rate has gone from 55.7% to 53.4% (corrected). If you include the franchise tax it went UP to 57.2%. Had we been fiscally sane over those years our ridiculous tax rate wouldn't be so ridiculous. And yes I'm a bit frustrated.
Item G (CRG pre plat)
This is a very large warehouse planned for the north side of 81 on Dayton Parkway. Being as large as it is, there are a lot of questions that staff, planning commission, and council has asked. Since this project is so large the planning commission and council will see this plat a couple of times to flush out issues.
Item J (Preliminary plat for River Walk)
This is the first significant preliminary plat approval passed by this council. Every house being built today was approved by a previous council. While we did make some changes to the setbacks for developments, this one was submitted prior to those being approved and won't have to comply. Any future preliminary plats will though. This development will be just to the west of River Hills situated between north diamond lake road and the river road.
As always contact me for questions on anything you are curious about.