The Sweet Home City Council decided last week to place the operating levies for police and library services on the May 18 ballot.
The levies expire on June 30, 2011. The five-year renewal request for the local option levies will extend them to June 30, 2016.
The police levy request retains its current tax rate of $6.40 per $1,000 of valuation.
According to city figures, the levy will raise approximately $1.86 million the first year. By the end of the levy cycle, in 2015-16, it will raise approximately $2.2 million.
The city is requesting a 20-cent increase to the tax rate, from 62 cents to 82 cents per $1,000, raising an estimated $238,000 the first year and $285,000 in the fifth year, 2015-16.
“There is a proposal to ask for more for the library,” said City Manager Craig Martin. “The library has struggled with adequate finances to have either a beginning fund balance or an ending fund balance depending on where you’re at in the year and pretty much operated on a shoestring.
“And in looking at that, the request for the additional 20 cents will help build up their reserve funds and put them in a more stable financial position. We also know that we’re going through an automation upgrade that is primarily being funded by volunteer contributions, but we will have maintenance and ongoing costs going over probably the rest of the life of the library.”
Police Chief Bob Burford is hoping to pay off the 20-year bond used to help construct the Police Department building if the levy is passed this spring. That would be 10 years early. He started looking at ways to pay it all off last year.
“We wanted to see if we could pay the whole thing off,” he said, but the department’s reserves weren’t quite large enough.
Since then, the department has gone from 17 to 16 officers, replacing one position with a civilian, he said. The department has saved additional money with the more fuel-efficient Impalas and in other areas.
“This year, we’ll have enough saved (so) we can pay it off,” Burford said.
Even with the payoff, the department won’t need to raise the rate, which hasn’t increased since 2004, Burford said. “The bottom line is we think we can continue with the different cost-saving measures we’ve done. We think we can keep those the same and pay off the building.”
But unless the levy is renewed, the department won’t be able to make that payment, he said. If the levy isn’t approved, the department will potentially need those reserves to operate beyond the life of its existing levy.
Retiring the debt will remove the bond from tax assessments this year. The bond rate is in addition to limits on general
government property tax rates, but increases may be offset by assessed property value growth, which depending on individual properties, means taxes may still increase under general government rates.
“I’m not going to say there won’t be an increase on people’s taxes,” Martin said.
But it does mean that the bond tax rate won’t be included on tax bills this year.
Present at the meeting were councilors Jim Bean, Laure Fowler, Greg Mahler, Scott McKee Jr. and Mayor Craig Fentiman. Jim Gourley and Eric Markell were absent.
In other business, the council passed an annual resolution setting a variety of service fees.
The only change to the fee schedule was the reduction of the non-city resident family fee for racquetball membership. The fee was reduced from $112.50 to $100 per year.