Council keeps your tax rate, delays the $691,000 parks deal

Your tax rate: 4.193, again. Council voted unanimously to keep the city’s operating tax rate at 4.193 mills (each mill is a dollar of city tax per $1,000 of taxable value), plus 0.309 mills for the 2016 greenspace bond. Deputy City Manager Bernadette Harvill’s example: a $1 million home with the basic homestead exemption owes $1,614.31 in city operating tax.

Clarification. Sunday’s issue said city operating taxes rise $367,792, about 2 percent, at the same rate. That’s the city’s five-year comparison, which counts all taxable property, new homes included.

The same memo gives the other figure the state requires, which counts only property that already existed, at its new values. On that measure, the rate is “a 0.3% decrease in projected property tax revenue compared with the prior-year.” Both figures are the city’s; they measure different things.

And Sunday’s In this issue box said the parks contract “is on the consent agenda, plus your tax rate.” The tax rate was never on the consent agenda, the routine items Council passes together in one vote without discussion. It got its own vote, after public comment.

The parks contract waits. The $691,000-a-year Tri Scapes parks contract won’t get a vote until Nov. 2. As Monday’s meeting opened, Mayor Peyton Jamison asked Council to move it, “due to inadvertently leaving out that contract” from the meeting packet, the documents Council gets ahead of time. Sunday’s issue reported the contract wasn’t there.

City Attorney Ken Jarrard told Council it could still take the item up that night without the contract in the packet, but that moving it “out of an abundance of goodwill” was fine. Council approved the changed agenda unanimously.

Everything else passed, all unanimously:

• The rest of the consent agenda, including the $228,497 paving contract that drew one bid, and three after-the-fact approvals: Crabapple Fest’s stage, its restroom trailers and the traffic-signal contract.
• Sixty more days for the Deerfield development moratorium, now through Dec. 18.
• The five-year update to Milton’s comprehensive plan, the city’s long-range plan for growth and land use.
• The go-ahead to condemn, or take through a court process, the last piece of land the city needs for the roundabout at Bethany and Providence roads, after talks with the owner stalled. The city puts the appraised $106,300 in escrow with the court while the price is settled.

City Manager Steven Krokoff was absent. No reason was given at the meeting. Both deputy city managers were there.

Watch the meeting →