The Crookston City Council held a special meeting on Tuesday evening at the Crookston City Hall Council chambers and unanimously approved the 2026 preliminary levy at an 8% increase.
The meeting only took two minutes with unanimous approval from the council. The preliminary levy is set at 8% and now the council is tasked with trying to whittle it down to a lower number by late December. “Next steps are just kind of go back to the drawing board, take a step back. We’ll reevaluate budgets and capital improvements,” said Interim City Administrator Darin Selzler. “Like we mentioned yesterday at the budget workshop, you know, I think we’re sitting pretty good. We’re pretty proud of where we were able to accomplish and set the preliminary levy.”
The council and department heads will look at possible cuts to get the final levy lower than the 8% number they are starting with. “Like everything, the goal is now to go back, try to make some additional cuts or something that we can do to lower the levy,” said Selzler. “I’m confident we can do that and gives us a little bit of time here instead of rushing through like we did the last month. And like I said, just take a step back and kind of start over, go back to the drawing board and work on things again.”
The Truth in Taxation meeting is set for December 1 and the official final levy will be decided in late December.
To see how the council got to the 8% number, click the link below to view the story from Monday’s meeting.
