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Current Events
- If you or people in your area want to meet and discuss any topics on your mind, reach out to me and we will set up a time to visit.
- The Dayton Lions are planning a Music activity this fall, Sat Sept 9th in Central park. The band is XPEDITION. They're a Journey, Foreigner, Kansas, and Styx cover band. You can check them out HERE. Contact me if you have questions!
- Heritage days is planned for Sept 15-16 at Stephen's Park and the Old Village. The Lions and Dayton Community Foundation (DCF) is putting this on and the city will be a sponsor.
- The city has an opening on the planning commission. If you are interested, contact me or the city directly.
- The city is opening up a position for a part time (20 hours / week) activities director. Contact the city.
Work Session (Budget for 2024)
For the last couple of months we've had presentations from all the departments on what they would like to allocate money to in next year's budget. What I seen from fire and police was what they were asking for was going to be fairly expensive
For decades the fire department ran with a part time chief and a part time code inspector. Discussions during 2020-2021 were around if we should combine those positions to one full time chief, and we finally filled that position in 2022. Now the fire department is saying they need to rehire a part time code inspector and a full time assistant chief (about a 40% increase in budget).
The police department currently has 9 full time officers under the chief, and he wants to add 4 more (about a 40% increase in budget).
This meeting was where we were presented with the cost of all the department requests... and it's massive. It's roughly $1.7M of new taxes on top of the current $6.5M tax levy.
That's an increase in 1 year of 26%.
This would be the largest increase in both amount and percentage in Dayton's history.
That doesn't mean it would increase your taxes by 26%. We have a lot of new house and industrial developments that the city will receive taxes from and those would account for 16%. In other words, if the tax increase is limited to 16%, the average tax payer would not see any increase and would write out a check to the city for the SAME amount they did for the last budget.
And that's my goal.
One of the political tricks I've seen over the years is for a politician to claim they're not raising taxes on you because the tax rate stayed the same. What they aren't telling you is that's only half the equation. Your property value is the other half. They'll say "it's not my fault your value went up!" except the city doesn't get paid a rate... It sets the amount it's going to take from all the properties and the resulting math sets the rate. So if you hear someone say that phrase, know that they're counting on voters ignorance of the process to claim they're innocent of raising taxes. If this seems confusing (there's a lot of details) feel VERY free to call me and I can come to you or call you and go over it.
If your property value went up, and this 26% increase is approved, you WILL pay more to the city next year.
In addition to the new taxes this will add, I suspect we're going to see a huge decrease in development next year and if values also drop, the city would have to make tough choices. If we hire all this staff only to need lay offs in subsequent years, I would place full blame on those department heads.
Governments always seem to find reasons to grow, some of which is justified since the city has more houses and industry to service, but in my opinion 26% is way out of line.
From the discussion, I believe we have 2 against this and 2 for this (including 1 that works for one of those departments).
This is a significant jump in taxes. I would suggest you talk to your neighbors and make it VERY clear to every council member your opinion on this (either way). Here's a link to the contact information->HERE
Closed Sessions
These were to discuss a pending lawsuit and the results of a separate lawsuit.
Some of the results of the latter are public record so I can share those.
Housing First is a consortium of companies that develop / build homes. They brought a lawsuit against the cities of Dayton and Corcoran primarily claiming the city's building fees were too high (takings). The judge ruled in the cities favor for 2 reasons; lack of standing (those bringing suit must be the ones harmed) and there were no takings.
As always feel free to contact me for any reason!