Washington elaborates possible tax plan

WASHINGTON — Washington City officials shared numbers from a tentative plan to raise property taxes at a meeting last week.

“I upped the general insurance and the employee benefits as high as I possibly could (because) if we publish it that way, we can always go lower,” City Finance Director Kelsey Brown said. “If we max those levies out, we would be looking at an increase in the rate of 41 cents … the new tax rate, if we went with the 41 cent increase, would 15.6393.”

For every $100,000 of home value, Brown said the change would mean a difference of $22 per year.

City officials have not yet decided what they would do with the increase in revenue, but Brown isolated three possible choices.

The first option would be to send the revenue to the general fund, which would help pay off the newly built city hall building.

“With the rate not changing at all, we would have a transfer of $43,641 to our building fund,” Brown said. “If we increase the levy and don’t do anything else with the money, that would be a total of $91,000 that would be able to be transferred to the building to pay it off, hopefully this next fiscal (year.)”

Mayor Jaron Rosien said he preferred the general fund approach.

“My thought would be that option 1 leaves the most flexibility … using that levy to leave in the general fund that ultimately goes to build the capital equipment purchase and maintenance plan,” he said. “The ability to maneuver for surprises is most covered in option 1.”

Alternatively, the city could earmark money for popular, requested projects the city could not otherwise afford, such as an $80,000 sand filter for the municipal pool.

“The current one’s original, 21 years old, going on year 22,” Parks Superintendent Nick Pacha said. “There’s three of them, so we’ve been lucky to get buy with the current two. We have to get a special exemption from the state to run on those two and still meet our filter requirements, so I’d like to somehow try to set some money aside for that.”

Finally, the city could choose to use the revenue to boost staff wages, an option complicated by this year’s unusually late union negotiations.

“Union negotiations are much later than normal, which is unfortunate,” Rosien said. “We have that scheduled for March 9, and we’ll have to act accordingly in reverse.”

With a deadline to turn a final budget over to the state by March 31, council members elected to wait before making a decision.

“It’s a big decision,” Rosien said. “For that reason, taking that information in and bringing it to our next budget workshop seems like a responsible plan.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com