City Council - Special Meeting

All right. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to this special city council meeting. We'll go ahead and call this to order. We'll first stand for a moment of silence, and then we'll have the Pledge of Allegiance. Please rise.

Pledge of Allegiance.

All right, Madam Clerk, roll call.

Mayor Jones.

Here.

Vice Mayor McPartland. Here. Council Member Nunn. Yes, here. Council Member Matthews. Present. Council Member Dodd.

Here.

All right, thank you so much for that. Now, first order of business is item 5A, reconsideration of the trim notice millage rate. Do we have Mr. Benton?

Yes, sir. I just want to explain the process a little bit. So there had been a request to have a motion for reconsideration um the way the rules would have to work is that motion would have to be made first and you can have any as much discussion as you want leading up to that motion second and vote once that's done that brings that item back to the table as if the vote had never taken place the public hearing or the hearing you know all your discussion from before still exists but it just wipes out that vote and then at that point after If that goes, then you just start all over again. So, um, so the most for reconsideration will have to be done 1st.

Yes. And do we have a motion for reconsideration?

Yeah, Mr. Mr. I don't know. I think I talked to when I talked to Brian, I thought I would do this call special meeting. Um. The, uh, as we know, information came from the city manager that, uh, 3.3339 is not actually rollback. And that, uh, if he. Kept that number in the term notice and advertising you'd have to advertise it as a tax increase because the actual rollback number is 3.3318. Very minor difference, but it would have to say in the term notice that we're increasing taxes. The objective. As I understood it was that the 3.339. Was actually rollback and we would advertise that as no tax increase. So that changed the complexity of that. I'm not interested personally in moving for a reconsideration on that motion if we're not going to adopt the real world in the number. That's not why we're here, so I will, I will make a motion and we reconsider the. What was the date of that? What was the date of the last on last Wednesday?

July 22nd. Okay.

That we reconsider the motion said that I made on May the 22nd, July 22nd. To establish 3.3339. As the.

as the millage rate for the term notice and i think i have to do these in two motions you can't do it in one can you uh correct and that that was my point we had to do the reconsideration so second to recall that all right get that motion all right so we have a motion and a second all right is there any other discussion anybody from the public like to speak on this anyone with their hand raised on zoom

No one has raised their hand.

All right. Thank you so much. Public input is closed. Any more deliberation here? Madam Clerk?

Vice Mayor McPartland?

Yes.

Council Member Nunn?

Yes.

Council Member Matthews? Yes. Council Member Dodd? Yes. Mayor Jones? Yes. Motion carries.

Now, Mr. Mayor, I'd like to place on the floor a motion that we establish the millage rate for trim. And I'm going to change this up. I'm not going to use numbers. I'm going to say at the rollback rate, which is established by the tax assessor. Um, so that that's my motion.

I'll second that.

All right. Um, we have a motion in a 2nd. Anyone from the public who would like to speak on this item? Yes, ma'am.

Brace read Sebastian. All right, we've got the motion. Are we going to get any discussion about the money that this is going to cost over what the original row back that was stated is, or is that still the same number?

282 that 280 some odd thousand out of reserves right next question is coming up gotcha thanks okay so it sounds like i probably need to modify my motion is that reasonable because i think the city manager likes some direction on how to do that i don't think you need to re recall your motion i think your motion stands and during discussion we can disclose that information

Right. And that was my point there. So we're looking at this, the original numbers that we were speaking of, that's going to come from the reserve is 282 plus, but now it's going to be more.

Yeah. Mr mayor, if I may, we have a PowerPoint slide that we can put out there that will show it so that it's clarified. Um, can we get PowerPoint out there please? And Brian, can you just go to the 2nd page? So this here will show the original draft budget at 3.4455. That shows that number. And it would have been an increase of $288,052 from rollback. Percentage increases 3.41. The council approved rate that has been reconsidered from the July 22nd meeting was 3.3339. That increase from rollback would have been shown as $5,320 and a .06% as referenced by Council Member Dodd. In my discussion with each of you on Thursday, I just said it's going to show as a percentage increase. and that would have shown as a 0.06 percentage increase. The corrected rollback rate of 3.3318 is the rollback rate, and it would require an use of general fund reserves of $288,052, which is an increase of $5,320 over the previous council approved rate. All right. Thank you. Any more questions for Mr. Benton?

Can I say something? Yes. I would like to point out because the state does what the state does and the 3.4455 listed on the screen now is the tax rate that we taxed our city at last year. And while the state doesn't consider that no tax change, they consider rollback no tax change, we're actually dropping our tax rate from what we had last year by roughly 0.11 like three five or something like that so we're actually dropping our tax rate from last year so we're actually giving a tax cut this year in real percentage and millage numbers with the tax and with the appraisal increases that the property appraiser does that we have no part of uh there may be changes do we know what the average say 300 000 house or whatever the difference in their tax bill would be compared to last year i know you had it before with the old rate

Yeah, I mean, the rollback rate establishes that there would be zero increase. Correct. There might be a negative. It might actually go down a little bit for some homes. That's what I'm thinking.

Technically, officially, it's considered no tax increase. Technically, it's really a tax decrease. So what would it be, Mr. Stewart?

So, yes, to go with rollback means essentially that there would be no tax increase for the city on the tax bill for individual homeowners.

So do we know roughly if for like a $300,000 house, what their tax change would be this year? Do we have a 250 or 350, one of those that we can kind of get a rough idea?

In the original presentation I showed on the slide with a $250,000 value with a homestead exemption, It's a difference of a decline of $2.32. That's just the math, but it depends on the individual homeowner.

Yeah, $2 to $4 difference with this change, probably not a big difference financially.

Yeah, each individual homeowner would probably see a small difference. Right, okay. But overall, it's considered no tax increase.

Understood. But in essence, it really is decreasing the taxes. So, all right, I know the state doesn't like to play those games, and they like to use the rollback number as the,

the gold standard or whatever but it's not the reality okay I appreciate it thank you the whole conversation about that is not about millage rates about dollars and taxes correct and the rollback establishes that the city will collect the same dollars that they collected last year in taxes not the same millage rate right if we discount property value increases and we discount new property that comes into the city then it's a different story. When we talk about what the individual citizen pays in taxes, rollback means that they should pay the same exact dollars that they paid last year in taxes. That's what the rollback rate establishes. It's nebulous. It doesn't always work out to be a dollar for dollar thing. Somebody may pay a dollar more, somebody may pay a dollar less, but it's not about millage rate. We talk millage rate. That's smoke and mirrors to the public. Millage rate only means that We say that the rollback, the 3.339, for example, if we say, well, that's not a 3.445 because it was what was what last year that we're not increasing taxes, that's wrong. We are increasing taxes if we adopt that because there's been an increase in the value of the property, and we don't know. That's set by the tax appraiser, the property appraiser. i don't know if you could sell i couldn't sell my house today for more than i could sell it for last year but it would be taxed at a greater value because it's been established to be a greater value in that so um that's that's kind of not material necessarily to the discussion although i understand what uh what council member nunn is saying um I think the idea here was because we didn't want to increase, didn't want to notify this at 3.339 as a tax increase, that the objective, as I understood it, when I actually asked for the special meeting, and I would not have asked for the special meeting if that had not been the objective, very clearly the objective that I was told was to adopt 3.3318 as a millage rate.

that's it sir yes all right um so we've had all the communicate can you um someone um clarify the motion again please that we had the motion was to set the trend notice at the rollback rate it did not give a specific number but at the rollback rate

I don't know if the property appraiser may change that. I don't know where the difference in numbers came from. All I know is that when you called, you said, this is what we told you. I don't know whether that was an update from the property appraiser. I don't know what that is. I don't want to establish a need to have another meeting or do something incorrectly. So what we'll do is, my opinion is, the motion should be adopt the rollback rate from the property appraiser and

at some point in time i hope that'll be fully clear yeah no i i this is the rollback rate is what what you see before you there was we get numerous numbers from the property appraiser from june 1st to july 1st those numbers we had incorrectly entered a number that wasn't the final number and so when that was recognized thursday morning after the council meeting that it was brought to my attention. And from my interpretation of the meeting, you all wanted to go to rollback. It wasn't necessarily a number, but the motion had a number in it. So in order to clarify that, we had to call a special meeting. That's the reason we're here tonight. Okay. So if we need a number in the motion, I can modify my motion.

No, we're fine with you stating rollback and we'll go forward on there. All right.

All right. Very good. So anything else that we have the public speak on this already? no anyone from the public like to speak on this anyone raise no one has raised their hand all right uh thank you public input any more questions or anything from here madam clerk roll call council member nunn yes council member matthews council member dodd yes mayor jones yes vice mayor mcpartland yes motion carries all right um thank you and that concludes our business for this evening we are adjourned