Say NO to Tax Increases
The City’s continuous use of Tax Increment Financing (TIF) arrangements like the ones being granted for the Addison Properties development, Seattle House II settlement, and all the other TIFs offered over the last decade or longer have placed the city in a very precarious position. TIFs rarely pay off for either the city, schools or the citizens of the community. Since property tax dollars are being diverted primarily from the schools to reimburse the developers for their costs, this has an impact on the overall community. These developments bring additional students to our schools. There is a high probability that new schools may need to be built and will involve added costs for land, building construction, ongoing operations, and staffing. This also means more school levy requests and added school district taxes for the overall community. There seems to be a lack of concern from our city leaders for the overall community and solely a concern with providing developers with added funds.
An argument can be made that the prior TIFs the city has engaged in have not panned out and are contributing to the financial predicament we are currently experiencing today. The city’s overall finances are suspect and on the heels of a soundly defeated request for a tax increase in March of 2024 a select group of our city council members decide to seek a tax increase of greater than 24.3% this November. Should that fail they seek to eliminate entirely the current income tax credited for people who work in other municipalities.
Now that we have a new City Manager, it seems to be the perfect time to consider a different fiscally sound course versus the status quo. The General Fund Income Tax Revenues increased 24.4% from 2021 to 2022 and increased an additional 9.3% from 2022 to 2023. This is a 36% tax revenue increase since 2021. How is it that our city cannot seem to make ends meet with this much additional tax revenue?
Each department within the city should be individually analyzed to figure out who continually exceeds their annual budget. There should be absolutely no reason to request a tax increase or the removal of the income tax credit when income tax revenues have grown by 36% since 2021.
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