City petitioned to roll back tax rate

The Messenger
BY JILLIAN NACHTIGAL
jnachtigal@wcmessenger.com

The City of Rhome has received a petition to roll back the tax rate which will result in an election in 2024.

The city decided to keep the tax rate level from the 2022-2023 fiscal year to the 2023-2024 fiscal year, but the council received a valid petition to reduce the tax rate from the adopted rate of $.437815 to the voter approval rate of $.335372. The petition had 97 total signatures, 68 of which were registered voters, which requires the city to hold an election to allow residents to vote on lowering the rate.

The tax rate of $.437815 per $100 valuation would generate approximately $211,000. The city council agenda packet noted that the revenue would be combined with the funding of approximately $120,000 that was budgeted for infrastructure for a total of $331,000. The money would be used to repair potholes, street failures, old clay pipes in Old Town and other projects, according to the city.

“When they walked the street and beat the doors for signatures, did they alert them that if we roll back taxes, you might as well forget about new streets and new sewer lines going in?” Council member Jimmy Johnson asked at the last city council meeting. “Was all of that presented, or did they just say, ‘hey sign here and we’ll keep your taxes down?’”

City Administrator Amanda DeGan said she did not have an answer for that, but the petition did not state how the money from the adopted tax rate would be used and that it was restricted for infrastructure improvements only.

“That was my main concern,” Council member Kasey Shumake said. “What was the education here for everybody signing? … The city now has the money to fix these things we did a survey on to address those complaints. But now we have a petition saying we don’t want to address this.”

The election ballot will contain statutory language that permits voting for or against a proposition to reduce the tax rate for the current year from the adopted tax rate to the voter approval tax rate.

The rollback to the voter approval rate would decrease the tax rate by approximately $.14 a day, which would be around a $50 difference annually for the average Rhome homeowner.

If the taxing unit has begun collecting taxes at the time of the election, some taxpayers may have paid taxes under the original adopted tax rate. If the tax rate is reduced to the voter-approval tax rate, the city will refund the difference between the taxes paid under the original tax rate and taxes levied under the voter-approval tax rate.

“I will caution, council, that this is simply a petition, your voters still have to speak,” DeGan said. “It could be affirmed at an election, and we continue to move forward. It just changes the trajectory and the speed we could do some of these projects.”

The election will be held in the next uniform election date, which DeGan said could fall in either May or November 2024.

The council meets 6 p.m. Thursday for its regularly scheduled meeting. The agenda includes correcting a typo in the resolution regarding the petition, and a pair of public hearings regarding a Rhome urgent care facility and a business park addition.