The Crookston City Council met for a special presentation of Truth in Taxation on Monday night inside the Crookston City Hall Council Chambers before their meeting at 7:00 p.m.
City Administrator “Corky” Reynolds began by explaining the budgeting process saying they asked the City Departments to prepare their own budgets for items they would like to have for their departments back in July. After looking through them and setting the preliminary budget at a 37.5% increase, they limited the items the departments requested from wants to what the departments needed for the next year, which lowered the budget to a 25% increase. Not satisfied with the decrease, the council then worked to eliminate the items down to just the necessities the departments needed and to use city reserve funds to pay for the items they cut, which brought the levy down to an 18.15% increase, which Reynolds and Lindtwed elected to bring before the council. He explained that the levy increase was a tax statement of the city’s portion of their tax bill, not an 18.15% increase on taxes, and would only increase city taxes by 3.817%. “It does not mean an 18% tax increase. It is not dollar for dollar, percent to percent. What has to happen is, if a citizen owns a home, look at your Taxable Market Value, and multiply that by 1%, that will get you your net tax capacity,” said Reynolds. “Then at 18.15%, which we’ve established as our final, you multiply that number by .644, and that should get you exactly or very close to the number that is on your proposed tax bill from the county.”
Reynolds then came forward with a budget packet on some of the projected increase expenditures and some of the significant increases that were factored into the budget. “We have projected increased expenditures. The department heads and I arrived at a potential 40% ($184,000) increase for utilities (electricity, fuel, natural gas). We had increased expenditure for wages. We were in the process of negotiating labor agreements. We’ve tonight approved a law enforcement group getting some wage increases so that we obtain and retain qualified officers for our city ($625,000),” said Reynolds. “We’re in the process of negotiating with AFSME, that takes care of our Public Works workers, Parks & Rec workers, and various other individuals. We believe we’re at a tentative agreement, but those provided for significant increases. The city has some significant increases here, which were factored into this budget.”
Other items included various improvements and repairs to various departments for about $296,000. They also had an audit and miscellaneous other expenses that had also seen increased expenses, but with the council’s recommendations, they had removed certain items to be deferred to the future and used the city’s reserves from their General Reserve Levy to save on some expenditures such as a new police car with all of the electronics within it and Park & Rec playground equipment to save a total of $423,000, which helped save the tax levy to an 18.15% increase, and generate $1,288 of city revenue.
Reynolds then opened the meeting to the public to give their thoughts on the levy increase. Bruce Krueger approached the board saying that he had seen his taxes increase by 21% ($320), and with his property value increasing with his taxes, it is causing people with a fixed income to not keep pace with the rising tax rate and wished to know where this money was going. Finance Director Ryan Lindtwed approached the council to explain that the taxable market value would tell the net tax value for his home. Administrator Reynolds explained that the taxes would go toward city employee wages, department facility repairs, and department equipment. Robert Torkelson approached next to ask the council to reconsider changing how it taxes homes that have stood for many years and that their high taxes and spending were causing homeowners to pass Crookston and even driving people out of their homes. The council responded by saying that the city looked to balance the city’s needs to function with the citizens’ ability to pay their taxes. “We try to balance what we believe the city needs to function effectively to the benefit of citizens with the citizens’ ability to pay. We’re not tone-deaf on that. But, we need to establish what our needs are and how do we meet them,” Reynolds explained. “We know our needs for fuel and utilities have gone, and the contracts with the Labor Unions, and rightfully so, have gone up. So we have increased expenses which we try to balance with the ability of all of our citizens to be able to fund what the city believes it needs.”
After much discussion, the council decided to make their final levy increase of 18.15% and bring it forward for a motion at the City Council meeting they had next.
Charts of the levy increase impact on Taxable and Business Market Values and how the city’s reserved levy funds were used can be seen below-
