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Item G (Sign Ordinance)
The new ordinance allows dynamic (similar to a LED TV screen) signs and sign sizes more appropriate to the size of the building. On the down side it took almost 2 years, resulted in 17 pages of code, and didn't address some glaring problems with the original ordinance (no dynamic signs on the building, no signs of any type on the sides of the building, No sharing of signs...
It is an improvement. But for the effort put in, it should have been much better.
Item H (Kwik Trip Truck Stop)
I've had a hard time with this one. When it first came up, I was ok with it. After that meeting, I started digging... the more I dug the less I liked it. I would prefer what it is intended for (Business Park) but I've also received feedback indicating that location has too many negatives for those types of businesses and convenience stores are all we can expect. It's clear to me that any convenience store is going to generate police calls, but I believe what Kwik Trip does with its properties, full lighting, full cameras, and full staffing minimizes that.
The outcome of the council meeting discussion was to have staff start work on a preliminary approval.
That's not where it ended though. Since that discussion I've spoken with a few other people that had first hand knowledge of truck stops. Their opinion was that we should not approve the zone change.
At this point, my opinion is that we can give this property some time to see if anything else comes up. If some times goes by and nothing presents itself, we can analyze it again.
Item I (final Budget / Tax Levy)
From the start of the year, it was clear this new council was going to focus on reducing spending more than the previous council did... at least back as far as 2017. The average total tax increase for the years 2018 to 2021 was 15.7%. That included the mind-blowing 23% increase for 2020.
Dayton has for years been notoriously a high tax city. The excuse has always been that we have too few houses for our 25 square miles. Well... In those same 4 years we had a 40% increase in housing, and a corresponding 44% increase in taxes.
More houses means more support from the city. However, those additional houses are significantly more efficient to support than our legacy homes. Therefore our spending should reflect increases much smaller than the increase in homes.
The final tax levy for 2022 will be a 7.1% total tax increase. Since there were an additional 14% homes added, this should mean a real tax reduction for most homes.
As a bonus, we restored the money going into the pavement fund that was (ridiculously) removed last year.
This takes our property tax rate from 52.7% (corrected) down to 48.5%.
While this won't result in a significant drop on the city portion of your tax bill, if we continue this trend it will accumulate and put us back on par with surrounding cities.
Item K (CIP)
The CIP (Capital Improvement Plan) is a schedule and rough cost estimate of significant items the city may need over the coming years. Unfortunately, it's become a little political and I would like to see the council have more control over the items when we next look at it.
Item L,M (Alro Steel Plat)
This is a preliminary plat for a 200,000 sq. foot warehouse. This property is immediately north of the Dayton Mobile Home park. This is one of many we will see over the next 5-10 years.
Item O (Park Place Storage)
This is an odd one. It's basically a "high class" storage unit facility. The "garages" are actually owned by the tenants rather than rented. They are ridiculously equipped 🙂 up to 1200 sq. ft., Heat, electrical, Wi-Fi, and some units may have water. This was a concept plan and wasn't apposed by any of the members. It would be the property east of the Alro property.
As usual, feel free to contact me for anything.