City Council - Regular Meeting

Evening ladies and gentlemen. This is a special meeting of the city council of the city of Waverly, Iowa, and we are called to order. Do I have a motion to approve the agenda? Move to approve the agenda. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor say I. I. Opposed. That is passed. All right. This is the date, time, and place for a public hearing on the proposed budget statement. The mayor and city council will entertain any comments. After all comments, the hearing will be declared closed. There any public comments?

I am one. If I may, go ahead. Please approach. Come to the podium and say your name, please. Sure.

All right. comments. Well, good evening. My name is Brock Sans. I'm a resident of Wavely Abbe for the last 50 plus years. Let me start by thanking all of you for your service to our community and all that you do. I'm here tonight not to undermine any one of you or anyone. Rather, I'm here to address my concerns, which are property taxes, because like many residents, I care deeply about the future of our city. And I'm concerned about how continued rising property taxes are affecting families and neighbors in our community. Based on the fiscal year 2026 property tax lever report from the Iowa legislature, Waverly City property tax rate is approximately $37.69 per,000 of taxable value, which ranks him on the 10th highest in the state of Iowa. And the last I checked, we were ranked sixth for a homeowner with a 47.443% 4 43% residential roll back. That means roughly 2,600 in taxes per year on $150,000 home or 5,000 in taxes per year on a $300,000 home. About $400 a month just in city property taxes. For many residents, this represents a meaningful portion of their take-home pay. And for those that are on a fixed income, that's a substantial amount. given that impact and I believe that bikers are the main reason for the current levy increase but I think it's imperative to look closely at how we how and when we take our independent commitments. One example most recently brought up on the social media post and talked about by many is the golf clubhouse renovations that was voted down at the last election but now is being talked about using lost otherwise known as local option sales tax to do these renovations. Many citizens do not understand this proposal using loss when it's been voted down which proposes the question are there

any functional loss setback for property tax burden are are we or have we ever considered using a portion of loss to help with the property tax relief or affordable housing many communities in Iowa use loss to help alleviate the property tax burden could that help ease the stress for the citizens of Waverly from what I've seen in recent council agendas and I understand I may not have the full picture. It appears there are multiple projects and expensive moving forward. At the same time, we see continued payments for infrastructure and engineering products, approvals for contracts and agreements and new proposals like the website redesign that I believe is currently accepting bids. Many of these items are approved through through the consent agenda or reoccurring pay requests. And if I understand correctly, they move forward routinely once included. There are also longerterm considerations, I believe, being discussed, although not approved, such as a potential solar lease, unless it's been tabled. Individually, these may all be reasonable decisions, but taken together, they represent a significant level of ongoing and featur future financial commitment. So, the question becomes, are we taking on too much at once? Are there opportunities to phase certain projects, delay lower priority items, or better sequence spending so that it aligns more closely with what residents can afford right now? Because even with each decision, when each decision makes sense on its own, the cumulative impact is what people feel. This isn't about stopping progress. It's about pacing it responsibly. I believe careful prioritization and timing are a part of a good financial management plan, especially when taxpayers are under pressure. I would ask and encourage the council to consider not just what can be done, but what should be done right now and whether adjusting the pace of spending

in the future could help ease that burden. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Do you want to address anything that was mentioned? Sure, we can. Do you have are there specific areas that you want addressed or did you just want to say your not just want to but you just want to share your thoughts or

I want to share my thoughts with the increase I can and I wasn't going to use myself as an example but I did bring along myself um because I lived in this town a long time and I've owned two homes. Matter of fact, my folks used to own the Lee Motel downtown on Por Street many many years ago. Some of you probably don't even know that when that was a motel across from Dairy Queen. But my personal residence and it's it's we start I just went back to four years 2021. My taxes were 5,300 this last I just paid March 1st 6,812. Now I'm probably okay because I've had a lot of years to plan and and I and I did. But what about that person that that's on a fixed income? I personally know somebody that's still working. He's 75 because he can't afford to retire. And it isn't, you know, some of them people that are in that older age bracket, it isn't their fault really, but some of their the jobs that they had didn't offer them an opportunity to put money back. They weren't paid enough. They might not have had a 401k match. They might not have had a pension or they had that job and then they lost that job. I guess my concern is I just feel like we're getting so priced. I want to bring people into town. I worked in the business in the town for 43 years and retired and my goal was it to bring more people in town and that what that does is it's going to lower our property tax in the long run because we're going to have more people putting into a pool but I think if we can just you know we look at what we spent in this town and mind you I love my town. I love the opportunities in this town, but I also want to keep pace with with our spending because if it keeps going up, we're going to force people and we don't want I mean, I don't want that. I want our account to grow, but if you're a young person coming into this town, my taxes, and I don't want I don't want I didn't

want to come up here and complain. I wasn't even going to come down here, but my relatives said, "You need to go and just say your peace. my taxes, my household insurance, and my car insurance for one car. And I got to have all these because if my house gets torn down by a tornado, whether it's paid for or not, I'm out unless I got $500,000 to rebuild it. But long story short, that cost me $897 a month in this town just for that. I haven't got my groceries. I haven't got my my utilities or any of that. That's just for me to live. Now picture somebody on a fixed income social security then have an opportunity to put money back again. I'm okay. I mean I'm not up here to say just I'm okay. I'm fine. But I'm not here just for me. I'm here cuz I'm concerned about some of the the Wavely residents, some of the older folks. We have an older population.

And I appreciate your thoughts on this. You've raised some really good points. Is there a certain area that you would like an answer to within this proposed budget statement? Let's let's talk about the golf renovation. So, is there a specific question you have about that? What are we using? What are the tax dollars? It got voted down. So, some of the questions are we're looking at it again, correct? Using lost tax dollars. Okay.

So, when it was voted down the first time, like we need to back up our history a little bit, that was a $5.5 million tear it all down, take three feet off the hill, build a brand new massive clubhouse, new parking lot, the whole thing. The item we're talking about now is less than half that amount. It's 2.6 million because we're renovating what's actually there instead of going out and tearing it down and building a brand new one, which is what the feedback was. It was too much and you should work with what you have. That's what we're trying to do. Of that price, twothirds of it was going to be from the local option sales tax anyway. The vote was held in 2023 to see whether people would want the golf course put into the local option sales tax as an eligible item to be paid for with 80% approval. That and the pool were added. So, as far as property tax, you have to vote on that from the local option sales tax. Where does it go? Where does it not go? And it's not currently in there. Now, every time you buy police vehicles out of there and ambulances and things like that, that's general fund property tax. You're not paying out of your pocket. It's coming out of local option sales tax. You have parks, you have streets, all kinds of things come out of there that is property tax relief because we have to have police vehicles and and we have to have ambulances and we have to have fire trucks and all this stuff. And those prices have escalated for us too. I know your house has gone up in value. So is mine. My taxes have gone up too. We all but a $40,000 pickup is now $85,000.

That's true. That's not from anything we did. That's postco and we still have to have those. Uh you're looking at equipment that's $300,000. It used to be 2/3 that not that many years ago. So everything is going up and the valuation is what drives as much as anything. You know how much your property was valued at in 2021 and where it is?

$272,900 today $391,190. So that's an increase in four years of $118,290. In one year's time it went $80,000. And if I didn't know it was going to go up $80,000, I'd have bought five properties exactly like mine cuz that's a good return on my money. you and me both. Uh in that year it went up that high that was a 21% average across the city after the roll back kicked in the city had an increase of 2.9 and that's it. So when we try to factor these things in, we lost money this year thanks to the state and the roll back. We were actually negative.5 even though we grew $50 million as a city. We're negative.5g3 million.

And what's causing budget this? It's the roll back from the state. It's a statewide issue that they do. They look at everybody across the state. How do the properties go up? And then they lower it down to get it to within 3% increase total statewide, right? They don't care what happens to us versus what is the metro in De Moines going up 23% 25%. We went up a few%. And so the average across the city this year was 4.6.

So the budget that we're proposing right now, unless your property value went up over 5%, your taxes actually go down on the city portion. Now what you quoted at $37, that's city, county, and schools all combined. That's not just the city. The city is 17.5 proposed for the next year. So the 37 is city, school, and county al together. We're only a part of that. Hope you'd have the same discussion with the county and the school as well because they have just as much if not more control over what your taxes are doing. Same as we would. But as far as the property tax for the golf course, 2/3 was going to be from the outside local sales tax where people come in support it. We had $13,965,000 over 10 years going towards that property for people that lived in the city. Now that equates to $9 per $100,000 of taxable value for your house. So if your house is worth $391,000 after the roll back, it's probably worth about 200 because they take about half that off, give or take.

185,000. Okay. So you're under 200,000. Mhm. So it would have cost you about $17 for the year for that golf course property. Had they went ahead with property taxes. So by shifting the entire thing to local sales tax, you'll pay no property taxes for the golf course renovation. It'll be zero. Okay. So then maybe maybe one could ask and I suppose we need to attend these council meetings and get all these answers and so on and so forth. And and again, I'm not here to say you're doing a bad job. I don't take it that way at all, sir. I just want to give you information accurately so you

I'm trying to have an understanding and and I got to be honest with you. I mean, my taxes when I moved into my home are are more they've gone up triple from when I lived. And what it's going to do eventually either I've got to move and go for lower property taxes. I, you know, I'm not going to get into all the specifics of what I've been looking into as far as my personal uh is concerned, but I I just wanted to raise up a concern because I think that inadvertently you are you your group is responsible for how the money is spent and how the taxes are spent. It's lazing your your you know, you need to make that decision. I'm just here I'm going to I'm going to I just want to be a voice for the older generation that is that is uh don't really know uh what to say, how to say it, but are affected by it. I had a I had a relative stop by at my house tonight and he was going to see somebody and we talked a little bit and he he's he's got a concern as well cuz he's on a fixed income as well. But anyway, I I just I do want to end this thanking you all for what you do. I don't want you to think I'm not upset at any one of you. I mean I that's not my goal here tonight. I'm just hoping that we can just take that and work together on this and and you know the pool I often said, "Yeah, we we need a pool." I voted for the pool. I'll never use the pool, but I voted for it because I think our town needs it.