With a five-year plan that includes automatic increases in the city’s mill rate in order to create more cash flow, Mayor Nancy Rossi will propose her second city budget tonight in a special session of the City Council set for the Council Chambers at 6 p.m. Following the budget unveiling and address, the council will take up the matter of setting the public hearing on the proposal.
At press time, Rossi was still working on the budget, and refused to give any inkling as to what was to be included in the proposal for the fiscal year, beginning July 1. When asked, the mayor replied, “We are still working on it.”
The only real issue at hand is what the mill rate will be, and what kind of an increase will be allowable under the strictures set up by the Municipal Accountability Review Board. The MARB has had a stranglehold on city finances since the City Council approved a 2017 bond issue to pay off the previous $16 million deficit. Last year’s $162.86 million spending plan was only $11,000 more than the previous budget.
In a five-year plan worked out between the Rossi administration and MARB, the city is to see tax increases over the span with it capping out at 40. The only mystery for taxpayers, then, will be the increase sought by Rossi in the new budget.
The current mill rate (not including individual fire district taxes) is 36.26, but that is expected to rise as per the five-year plan. That means that homeowners will pay $36.26 per thousand dollars of assessment up to 70 percent of the total under current state law. Personal property tax rates, however, were allowed to be different under recently passed legislation up to 45 mills. The city’s personal property tax rate was 37 last year, and will probably go up in the new budget.
Once the budget is proposed by Mayor Rossi, and the public hearing is set. The City Council goes into a six-week review of the budget with a deadline for passage in the second Thursday in May under the charter.
During that review, the council may alter the proposal or change line items, but each alteration takes a supermajority of nine votes on the 13-member council to gain approval. That threshold has been difficult to hurdle over the last several years, making the review a tedious operation.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle are hoping the Charter Revision Commission, which is in the final stages of making its review of the charter, will propose a more workable alternative. Both the mayor and City Council Chairman Ronald Quagliani (D-at-large) spoke in favor of such a change early in the process.
Under the current charter as well, the City Council can only pass the budget as is, or pass the budget with alterations. It cannot, as has happened at least twice, reject the budget. If the council fails to pass a budget ordinance by the prescribed date, the budget as given by the mayor automatically goes into effect.