City Council - Regular Meeting

Hello, everybody.

Hello. Hello.

We have a lively audience. Let's

let's get going with the the passing the budget. 04/23/2026. Can I have Call

the meeting order?

Call the meeting order at 06:31. Pledge allegiance. Can we get mister Wallace? Roll call, please.

Mister Patz? Here. Mister Clark? Here. Mister Armstrong? Here. Mister Wallace? Here. Mister Thede?

Here.

Mister Thomas?

Here.

Mister Johnson?

Here.

Mayor Woolley?

Here.

Missus Bauer? Here. And mister Dagoni? Here.

We have a quorum. Regular agenda. Can I get a motion to approve the agenda?

Motion to approve.

Support. By mister Thomas, supported by mister Armstrong. Any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say yes. Yes. Yeses have it. Motion carried. 4.2, motion to approve opening public hearing on twenty twenty twenty six, 2027, City of Taylor proposed budget.

Motion.

Motion by mister Clark, supported by mister Thiede. Any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say yes.

Yes. It

is now open. Any comments from anybody?

Through the chair, being the first budget I've been involved with of a city of any kind like this, I'd like to say that I was very surprised and pleased with the openness and the ability of the directors, department heads and others to answer all of the questions that we had, no matter how stupid some of mine are about this budget. And I feel very comfortable working with these people.

Any other? Nothing online. So can I get a motion to approve closing of public hearing? Motion. Support. Motion by mister Thomas. Supported by mister Wallace. Any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say yes. Yes.

Yes. Yeses have it. Motion carried. 4.4, motion to approve the proposed City Of Taylor ad valorem tax levy rate of 24.8402 mills to authorize the clerk to certify the millage was spread by the city assessor, and taxable value valuations of all real and personal property subject to taxation within the city of Taylor to be collected by the treasurer. Can I get that motion? Motion. Support. Motion by mister Thomas. Supported by mister Wallace. Any discussion?

Yes. Would you please reread the ad for alarm amount that you read?

24.8402.

Consul? Different number than we

have. Yes. That's the one I was given.

Through the chair, is that the one that is handwritten?

Yes.

Okay.

Chair, there was a change. Jason was

Do we have You just explained it to you, remember?

No, I understand. But since the published agenda is different, do we have to do something different? Okay. Thank you.

Two four point eight three nine two is what was published. Okay. Yeah.

I think we have to propose to change it, don't we? How do we do that now? Well,

I can make a motion should be a motion to amend 4.4 to put the correct amount in there, which would be 24.8402.

I'd like to make a motion to amend regular agenda 4.4 to read 24.8402. Twenty four point eight four zero two. This was changed at the last minute because the county went from estimated numbers to actuals.

I'll support that.

Motion by mister Wallace. Supported by mister Thomas. Any discussion on

The sheriff, if I may.

Go

ahead. Just to give a little clarification on the change, we, when we, when we proposed the millage rate, we get information from the assessing office that calculates what they call the heavy rollback factor, the MRF factor. We'll go over that more in one in the next agenda item. But they had a factor of give me one sec. They calculated a factor of point zero nine nine two eight.

And then the county on Monday, the county submitted their county equals equalization factor, was point zero nine nine two nine. So, discussions with the assessor, there were some veterans exemption taxable values that were not taken into account the county level. That's why their number is a little bit better. Again, point zero zero zero one difference. But we wanna make that change on this approval because this is the public hearing to talk about the tax levy and things like that.

If councilman Johnson may remember and everybody was here last year, we had to do this change, but this change was done after the the public hearing was done and the bill was voted on. So we had to amend that resolution in the meeting in May because the county came up with a number that was off 0.0001 as well too. So, that's what the reasons for a change is, is that we're just using the county number instead of our assessor number that was off just a little bit because of some veteran exemptions taxable values.

And just for clarification, Jason, we had talked about changing this and we thought we did and you did change the backup.

We did. We did change the backup, but the motion itself did not change, yes.

Okay. Any more discussion? There are none. All in favor say yes.

Yes.

Yes. All opposed? Yeses have it. Motion carried.

To the chair, this is gonna sound very technical, but what we just voted on was the motion to amend.

Right.

What we now have to vote on is the amended motion, which is the original 4.4 with the new number of 24.8402.

May I get a motion on that? I'll make that motion. Have it. We already have it. Okay. Alright. Who was that motion by?

Well, we had a motion to approve. We amended it in the middle.

I know. But what who's

I made the motion and houseman Wallace supported.

And now all we have to do is we know we have a new number. We amended it. Okay.

So we have to just vote on the motion that was before amended.

We voted on the motion to amend. That was approved. Mhmm. So now we have to vote on 4.4 with the new number in there.

Okay. So we're gonna

A new motion.

Okay. New motion. Yes. New motion. Okay. Go ahead.

I'll make a motion to I'll support.

Slide. Then next slide.

Go And to the If not, all in favor say yes. Yes. Yes. All opposed, yeses have it. Motion carried. 4.5, motion to receive and file memorandum from director of budget and finance regarding Ed Lee Truth in taxation calculation. Motion. By mister Wallace, supported by mister Thomas. Any discussion?

Mister chairman? Yes. As I mentioned before, I'm just gonna take some time on this item just to try to explain this memo we do every year during the millage rate approval. And what this is, if you if you look at my memo, look at the worksheets that are behind the memo, it comes with the concept of the reason why we have a public hearing For the to do the levy is because the the concept they call truth and taxation. So what it means is that You have you know if if you're not aware of it there's two State legislation items that come into play when we talk about city millages.

It's the headly rollback and also the proposal way. Headly rollback is a number that's calculated citywide and total taxable values that it cannot exceed the lesser of inflation and or 5%. And then similar and in connection to it is proposal way that talks about individual parcels that they cannot go higher than inflation CPI or 5%. Both those items kinda reflect in the work paper that you see here and then the work paper that we get from the assessor that we begin to look at any rollbacks. So basically the concept is is that Hadley says you cannot levy taxes that's going to create taxes higher than pretty much inflation For all the taxpayers in the city.

The base tax rate doesn't doesn't include inflation so when we look at the military calculation it does include a factor for inflation which is the reason why we need the public hearing. So that we're in accordance with that truth in taxation policy. So, again, the millage the MRF, the millage reduction factor is the Hetli, the BTRF is the base tax rate fraction. And since the BTRF rate little bit less than the millage MRF, we have to have that meeting, we have to have the the the the hearing, and so that we can levy the amount that we're asking for. Again, there's little bit more behind that too, but that's essentially the concept in the truth in taxation and heavy rollbacks and things like that.

One important thing to note is Heavy rollback is Final We do have a rollback this year I think the last couple years we've had rollbacks So just for example the the charter says that we can we can levy 9.5 mills for operation. But right now, our headly maximum for this year is at 8.1194. So, again, that's a pretty significant difference. And that rollback, that we can't roll forward. The only thing that can happen is that we can ask for a headly override that has to be voted on by the people if we wanted to get back to the 9.5 range.

So, good things to understand if, you know, right now the city's in a finance, in a decent financial situation, but back in the great recession days, a lot of communities were struggling with these headly rollbacks because we're not allowed to roll forward unless we get a vote of the people to do an override. And a lot of communities did that back then. Taylor never did but a lot of communities did do that because they needed the extra revenue because taxable values went down so much. Right? It protects you when taxable values go up but it doesn't protect the city when tax values go down. Just one of those things where I know that people are always talk about trying to fix Ted Lee and proposal A, but Just never really goes anywhere in the legislation. So that's that's my comments on that item.

Any other discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say yes.

Yes.

All opposed, yeses have it. Motion carried. 4.6, motion to approve 1% property administration fee to be included in twenty twenty six property tax bills. May I get a motion? Motion. Motion by mister Thomas. Support. Supported by mister Wallace. Discussion? Any discussion? Jason, would you explain this so everybody knows it again even though we do it every year?

Mister chairman I would just like to add that this is not even though we do it every year it's not an increase of 1%.

Right.

It's just a one time 1%. Yeah.

Yeah. So, according to the Michigan property tax act, the city is allowed to charge 1% administrative fee for tax collection. As far as I'm aware of, we've been assessing this Fee since I've been here and long before I've been here But again it is calculated on 1% of the total tax bill not on taxable value but the bill itself so You know $400 tax bill that admin fee calculates to $4 right So again it's it's it's a 1% fee that we have to approve at the council level to assess it. But it's a 1% fee that's on the actual tax liability not the taxable value is not a ad valorem tax it's a 1% on the total tax liability. And

we're very we're of. And of way fiscal year twenty twenty six and 2027 in omnibus budget amendment for fiscal year twenty five twenty six per attached resolution and budget documents. Motion to approve. Motion by mister Thomas. Support. Supported by mister Patz. Any discussion?

Mister chairman?

Yes.

I just wanna thank everyone, the administration, all of the department heads for all of your time. It's one thing for me for the last two years out in the audience trying to keep up with what the council was doing up here and being a part of it. It's something else kind of surreal. And I want to thank Tiara for all of the documentation that she printed for us and guiding us through the way of this this entire budget process. Okay. Thanks, everybody.

Mister chairman? Yes.

I just wanna touch on a few things before we vote on this. Number one, I wanna thank my, you know, my team, definitely, all the directors for all their hard work on this. Jason and Budget and Finance team up there, they do a lot of work before we even start this process. Dan in particular and Jason, we sit in my office for probably well over a month for anywhere from eight to ten, twelve hours a day sometimes. I can tell you that this is some of the toughest time of being a mayor. I gotta make very tough decisions. Sometimes it gets testy, and sometimes people get hurt feelings and stuff. But I have to make tough decisions. And balancing a budget isn't always easier. It's it's easy.

And I can tell you this was definitely probably one of the toughest ones in almost five years that I've been here. This is my fifth budget. But we got there. And again, it's a credit to everybody, you know, Jason and Dan sitting there and going through all the numbers and stuff, the department heads submitting their budgets and stuff. But, you know, finding money finding money isn't always easy, and it's getting tougher and tougher, you know, to find revenue.

And so I just want to thank everybody, you know. And again, it's a tall task, it's a lengthy process. And again, I appreciate you guys sitting through the budget meetings and stuff. I know that can be daunting. And it's a lot of teamwork as you guys can see.

It's a lot of questions, a lot of time. And again, Jason and his team definitely get a huge part of the kudos on that because, you know, they're the ones crunching all those numbers and stuff. Jason brings a lot of detail, you know, things to us and stuff to where we have a lot of that ready to go before we even sit down and stuff. So it's a tough time, but we got there and hopefully good things to come. So that's all I have, Mr.

Chairman. All been good things. Doing good.

Thank you, chairman, for for the dinner. Any

other discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say yes. Yes. All opposed? Yeses have it. Motion carried. May I get a motion for adjournment? Motion.

Motion by Support.

Armstrong supported by mister Clark. Any discussion? Mister chairman,

before we adjourn, I just wanna say I appreciate you guys doing this this time. You know, it's it's so nice to work with you guys. It's been a pleasure going through this process and to be able to come in here and work together the way we have. And we have disagreements here and

there, but I can say this is a lot different than

the last time we brought the first budget. Really? I appreciate that. That's kidding.

I remember that.

Really? Yeses have it. Motion carried. Meeting's adjourned.

No. Sounds too loud. I know.