At the Aug. 13 meeting, council approved action to propose the adoption of a tax rate of $0.325726 per $100 valuation, up from the FY 2023-24 rate of $0.308039 per $100 valuation.
Council also will vote on the budget at the Aug. 27 meeting.
Zooming in
This year’s proposed budget would raise more total property taxes than last year’s budget by $1,076,888, or 9.1%, with $539,648 being tax revenue raised from new property added to the tax roll this year.
Diving in deeper
As previously reported by Community Impact, the proposed tax rate consists of two parts: $0.178187 for maintenance and operations and $0.147539 for interest and sinking, or debt service.
City Finance Director Kyle Lester explained to CI in a previous story that taxes are going up because of some revenue gaps, including in part how the city’s annual operations are heavily reliant upon sales tax receipts. He said for the third year in a row, city officials are seeing those revenues slow down to a point that they are unable to keep up with rising costs in this year’s budget.
What else?
As far as the projected budget, operating revenue funds are projected to be $55.4 million, and expenditures are expected to be $63.3 million, of which $25.4 million will be spent on salaries and benefits—the bulk of the city's expenses. Of that $63.3 million, Lester said about $7.86 million is for one-time costs, for which the city will use available cash reserves. This primarily consists of vehicles, equipment and facility improvements, CI previously reported.
