Mayor apologizes as 10.6% tax hike is OKd
Staff writer
Just a single taxpayer showed up Tuesday night to question the City of Marion’s unanimous adoption of a budget that will increase residential tax bills from the city by an average of 10.6%.
“You know what,” Mayor Mike Powers said, “I’m a little surprised by that.”
Before inviting comment, Powers gave a 4½-minute speech defending the increase.
“Assessed valuation is up, and so a mill brings in more money . . .” he said. “Some might consider that to be artificial. Post-COVID, real estate just exploded all over the place, and everyone thinks that at some point there’s going to be a crash.”
Still, he appeared to minimize the potential impact of property reassessments, which are done by the county, not the city, under state guidelines.
“Not everyone’s taxes are going to go up if our mill levy doesn’t go down,” he said.
That won’t hold true for city council members, however. All five will see double-digit increases in their city taxes under the budget approved Tuesday night.
According to appraisal records, Amy Smith’s city property tax bill will increase 10.1%; Zach Collett’s, 16.8%; Powers’, 11.6%; Kevin Burkholder’s, 13.5%; and Tim Baxa’s, 11.6%.
Even if the council had stuck with a revenue-neutral tax rate, all but one would have seen tax increases.
Smith’s bill would have declined 0.5%, but Collett’s would have risen by 5.6%, Powers’ by 1.0%, Burkholder’s by 2.6%, and Baxa’s by 0.9%.
After the council unanimously approved exceeding the city’s revenue-neutral tax rate, Powers launched into a lengthy apology for how the city budget was prepared this year.
“You get tired of hearing the little boy cry, and you get tired of hearing the little boy whine about something,” Powers said, “It just kind of is what it is.”
When Powers and two other council members took office two years ago, “we didn’t have a city administrator, and we were really kind of behind the eight ball in many things.
“When budget rolled around,” I really felt like we were good [just] to get one put together. . .
“I said it, and I went on record with it, and I’ll stand behind the fact that we did not do what I said we would do, which is I said that this year you would see a much different process — that the making of the sausage, so to speak, would go on in public meetings, where you could see it.”
For the second year in a row, he admitted, that didn’t happen.
“You know how frustrated I am about that — and none of you care, and you shouldn’t, because it’s not on you; it’s on me,” he said. “We did start out . . . and then we just lost it. We didn’t lose the budget. We lost the public portion of it. The budget was being worked on all along by city staff.”
In the general fund, line items in the budget approved Tuesday are exactly the same for proposed 2025 spending, estimated actual 2025 spending, and proposed 2026 spending.
The numbers differ in only two places — $6,000 more in estimated and 2026 funding for general administration and $30,000 more in the same two categories for streets and alleys.
“You deserve better,” Powers said, “and I’ve looked at other cities’ websites, I’ve looked at things they have . . . and we should do that. . . .
“I would invite the public, if next year isn’t dramatically different in the process — not necessarily the outcome, but the process — then somebody make me own up and call me out.”
Administrator Brian Wells said that by exceeding the revenue-neutral rate, the budget would provide about $96,000 in additional revenue for the city.
“The lion’s share of that revenue will go into the reserve fund,” he said, “as we work to build our reserve in the event the city is unable to draw revenue from anywhere for a certain period of time.”
The general fund has a reserve equivalent to a little less than three months of revenue but will have slightly more than three months’ worth under the new budget, he said.
“The other part of the [$96,000} that’s not in the reserve will be used to help pay off a legal debt through our insurance company,” he said. “A slight amount of that money will go into the general fund.”
The city pleaded poverty earlier this year when a district judge ordered it to pay nearly $76,000 in legal fees for acting in bad faith in denying a request for records regarding the now-disavowed raid Aug. 11, 2013, on the Marion County Record newsroom and two homes.
At the time, the city asked Judge Ben Sexton to delay ordering payment until 2026 so money could be budgeted.
No specific line item regarding that amount has been mentioned in budget discussions other than Wells’ statement that a portion of the $96,000 in additional revenue would be devoted to legal fees while “the lion’s share” of that money would go into city reserves.
The reserve fund also could be used, he said, to provide local matching funds for various grants the city is considering or has requested.
The proposed budget calls for a tax rate of 70.728 mills, same as at present.
On a typical home with a fair market value of $100,000, this would result in taxes for city purposes of $813.37.
Combined with levies from other tax units, the total tax bill on a $100,000 residence in the hill area of Marion would be $2,370.94.
In all, the city is seeking $1,021,743 in property taxes in a budget that would authorize $9,596,472 in total spending, up 27.9% from this year’s estimated spending.