Greenfield council to consider maximum tax levy rate in Feb. 1 public hearing

GREENFIELD — Greenfield’s maximum tax levy rate will be considered by the city council in a public hearing Feb. 1 during the council’s regular meeting at City Hall.

The council had a first look at the rate at their Jan. 19 meeting, at which they set this public hearing.

According to the public notice published in last week’s newspaper, the maximum tax levy rate is set at a 5.61% annual increase, but city clerk Becky Haase said that when all the math is done, it amounts to an approximately .3% increase from last year.

While that doesn’t seem like a lot, the city council still expressed they didn’t want to have to raise the levy rate at all, however the financial position the city is in dictated it.

Haase also said the maximum tax levy rate can be confusing for the general public.

“It’s kind of difficult to explain because the max levy doesn’t include what’s in the full budget,” Haase said.

Haase said last year’s tax rate landed at approximately 13.2% and she projects this year’s to be at 13.51%, which comes to an approximately .3% increase from a year ago.

“It’s not really a big increase, but you’ve gotta be able to pay your bills,” Haase said. “The council doesn’t want to have to raise taxes because they’re all tax payers too and a lot of them have their own businesses in town.”

Background factors

The city conducted a survey last summer that has been utilized in various decisions since then. One factor being considered right now is the fact that public safety ranked as high importance to tax payers of the city when that survey was completed.

Outlining the budget process, Haase said she meets with the council’s finance committee and Mayor Jimmie Schultz to start off. They also confer with department heads, who have usually pieced together funding requests for anticipated expenditures.

Once that meeting is complete, Haase crunches the numbers to reconcile the needs and wants of the city with what is financially possible so that a proposed budget can be considered for approval.

Haase said that a city is primarily funded through property tax revenue and road use tax money from the State of Iowa, which are based on fuel sales and registrations, but the city also benefits from revenue from the sewer plant that can only be put back toward the sewer plant. Haase said sewer rates could have to increase in the near future to help fund the second phase of a project repairing sewer mains and manholes around town.

Other ways to gain revenue are through levying debt service through bonding, which is only initiated by a legal process, and can be used to pay for streets, sewers or big equipment purchases. Haase said that for the most part, councils in her time with the city have been “fairly conservative” in their approach of spending money like this.

This year’s budget

Haase said she tries to be conservative when penciling in revenue to the budget. On the expenses side, a cushion is built in usually for unforeseen circumstances. She expects several factors to uniquely impact this year’s budget in comparison to those of the past.

The first of these factors is lower sales tax revenue. A second is lower availability to local option sales tax dollars because of the fact that the council elected to utilize those to pay for the street project. A higher police budget also may be experienced because of high turnover in that department, Haase explained. Longer term, the city will need to begin looking for someone to be groomed to run the sewer plant for when the current person wishes to retire.

“It’s a balancing act,” Haase said. “These are the things you’d like to do and these are the things you can afford to do. You have to prioritize what’s most important.”