12-02-97 Council Special Minutes (2)

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MINUTES CITY COUNCIL DECEMBER 2, 1997 the City was considered as having the highest tax rate in the Metro area. Strohschein reported that his property taxes have increased over the past five years. Strohschein also expressed concern about the lack of street maintenance on County Road C and asked that the City give more attention to streets. Strohschein asked that the City Council be honest, up front, and careful with the way it spends tax dollars. Strohschein stated that he would like to see evidence of the good use of tax dotlars. Fahey acknowled~ed the articles a few years ago that ranked Little Canada as the highest taxed community. Fahey indicated that the problem with those articles is that they did not take into account that the City made improvements to its water system many years a~o and paid for these improvements through general taxation. Many other cities paid for similar improvements through assessments. Therefore, the comparison of tax rates of various cities was not comparing apples to apples. Another factor in that analysis was that the County had properties within the City valued at 95% to 98% of market value, while properties in other cities were not valued so close to market value. Fahey further responded that County Road C is a County road, maintained by the County. However, if there are problems noted with the maintenance of that road, residents should notify the City so that maintenance issues can be addressed with the County. The City Administrator reported that 1993 was the last year the Citizens' League had Little Canada ranked as the highest taxin~ City. Little Canada is currently ranked at #9. The Administrator a~reed with the Mayor's analysis that sales ratio and the use of ~eneral taxation to pay for infrastructure improvements played a large factor in this analysis. Another factor was the use of a hypothetical $90,000-valued home used for comparison purposes and the use of the sales ratio to "discounY' this value. The Administrator pointed out that the City's share of the tax bill has been ranging in the 14 to 15 percenC range. The School DistricC and the County make up the largest portion of property taxes. In three of the last five years, the City has been at a 0% net tax levy, and now ranks 9'~' in property taxes in the metro area. The Administrator further noted that in 1991 Little Canada ranked 47`~' of 95 municipal taxing jurisdictions while in 1997 Little Canada was 81s1 of 127 jurisdictions. The Administrator reported that the City has tried to do a good job holding the line on property taxes and is always on the alert in this area. Scalze repoited that if a property owner sees an increase in property taxes for 1998, the reason would be that the valuation of the property has been