City Council - Special Meeting

Hey, Lee. Good afternoon, everybody. It is now 6 o'clock by the real time, 6.01 or 6.02 on the city hall clock. The special called meeting of our council is to cut taxes. Thank you very much. I'd like to let the record reflect that all members of council are present. I'm going to turn this over to Mr. Probst.

Thank you, Mayor. I'll try to make this pretty brief. I know some of you have already heard this before. So, 2026 property tax proposal here. If you'll remember last year, we kind of did an anecdotal study of several categories across the city, and the findings supported what we believed was to be an inequality between single-family residential and small commercial versus everything else in the area. portfolio on the tax digest land values in particular appeared significantly undervalued and many of those had not changed for years or even decades so of course we ended that with a meeting myself the mayor and some county officials to try to bring some parity to the property appraisal system so we did a survey of some notable properties here um thereafter, this is this year's digest, just to kind of see what happened versus what we were picking up on last year. So the first little bit of survey here, just kind of give you an idea of some of the changes that took place. 40 properties yielded an increase to the digest at 100% value of $134.2 million, which is pretty significant. The average increased fair market value was 70%. And this little survey was commercial and industrial. Then we analyzed current apartment complexes. There was 23 properties and this yielded an increase at 100% of $56.5 million. And the average increase to FMV was 236%. And this is significant because approximately 10% of our population lives in these 23 complexes. And so We wanted to bring parity to all of the single family homes that have been basically floating the tax digest. So the landlords needed to have some parity in this. So out of these 63 properties, the total digest assessment in this survey was approximately $191 million and 100% fair market value. So at that current tax rate, that could have meant just an additional $529,000 from just those 63 properties.

So this was pre-appeals.

After the appeals session, we had a net digest increase of 13.56%. But as you know, you gotta apply the rollback, which that takes out any reassessments of existing property and really only equalizes it to the growth factor, what you have seen new in your digest. So what we're seeing here is, a proposed rollback rate of 6.526 mills, which would have increased 6.25%. A lot of numbers I'm throwing at you. Of note here, I've got two things circled in red. The exemptions, to be honest, we're still trying to wrap our head around what this means. And a lot of times we just have to trust the tax assessor's office for exemptions. calculating all these exemptions right so if you look 2025 exemptions 43.892 million and it bumped greatly to 61.8 million this year so some of that's probably some floating homestead some of that's some freeport exemptions under your commercial industrial digest but The bad thing is in the way the state has the county's reassessed properties, we basically have no time to really dig through the digest and understand what we're really looking at. So I just wanted to caveat that the exemption increase is massive and I'm still trying to unpack that even though we're gonna set the military tonight.

We had basically no time to do that.

Other net changes there, circled in blue, you see 58.7 million. That's just general growth on the digest. That shows we're still a pretty strong growing economy here, and that growth helps offset the pressure that we would have on our homes and businesses without it. And finally here, the 26 year history of the millage rates. So this century, this millennium, we're proposing the lowest rate ever in the last 26 years at least of 6.465 mills. So here on this five year tax digest that we have to advertise, I did wanna note right there in the red circle that beginning in 2024, the rollback, we have to do a rollback for sales taxes, right? Local option sales taxes. It decreased significantly from 23 to 24 because you remember the county took a lion's share of all of the city's sales taxes. Do with that what you will. But I will say that we've done remarkably well with our millage rate being able to lower it and still have far less of a sales tax rollback to deal with too. So it's kind of a double whammy for us, but we're still operating and being fiscally conservative.

That's all.

I do want to mention a couple of things. Talking about the county and other cities, I want to congratulate Walnut Grove last night for lowering their millage to, I think, the lowest it's been in the last decade. I also understand the county has homestead exemption issues. freeze for properties, which is why they took us to the woodshed on Lost a couple years ago. You may remember that those negotiations were a little bit clouded because baseball arbitration rules were declared unconstitutional, so all the balls were in their court. Therefore, due to that homestead freeze that they have, they just kept what was generated by this year's assessments. So yes, we're in better shape. I also want to let you know that Loganville, with their newfound assessments, increases have afforded two new police officers and a firefighter. So I think we as a county are all spending uh... money wisely uh... to create value for taxpayers And in our case, I think Logan's done an outstanding job with Beth and Chris and RV and all the other departments in holding the budget line so we can provide our citizens with the lowest millage that we've seen since I was in my 20s. So I think I'll take a motion to approve the millage as presented.

Move to approve.

I have a motion and a second by Mr. Bradley and Mr. Thompson. Is there any discussion? All in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

All opposed like sign. Motion carries. That passes. Is there anything else? Is there anything else that you would like to add, comment? Anybody in the audience?

Exactly what does it mean for the taxpayers, though, as far as? The homeowners? The military? Lowering it.

I mean, is it like... You know, on the city side, you're going to see a fair decrease. It's not going to be...

This year?

Yeah, this year.

It's not going to cut your bill in half or anything, but it is a... Logan, I have an estimate of a property value at $400,000. That would be a... about a decrease. It depends on if their assessment is the same. If it remains the same, it'd be about a $70 decrease in just their city taxes.

That's excellent.

I think the important part to remember too is that the tax bill for everybody inside the city limits of Monroe is not just from the city of Monroe, but it is the county and the school board. Because I know there's always a lot of discrepancy, but for me it's typically around I don't know, 17.5% to 19% of my total tax bill comes from the city. Right, right, right. The other 80% is outside of the city. So anytime we can reduce it, it's great. And I appreciate all the work that's gone into it.

Well, I appreciate your saying that. Any other questions? I'll entertain a motion to adjourn.

I'll move that one, too.

A motion from Mr. Bradley and a second by Mr. Crawford. All in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

All opposed, like signed. Motion carries.