We had our initial budget meeting last week. The Commissioner of Revenue is estimating that residential Real Estate values have dropped about 16%. We don’t know how much yet as the value is set as of Dec 31. This means that the tax RATE will probably be increased if the City is to spend the same amount in the coming year as this year. This does NOT automatically mean that the amount of money you pay in taxes will go up. This is what I was getting at when I was quoted for the Washington Post.
Will the total amount of taxes paid by our citizens go up? It is hard to tell right now. The tax rate increase just to get the City back to a flat budget is somewhere around 17 cents (as shown in the WaPo). A flat budget means the City has the same amount of money and you pay about the same amount of taxes as you did the previous year.
The City Manager is already looking for ways to save money in the current year in order to make next year a little less problematic.
For my part, I believe the rate has to float up and down. Just because home valuations rise and fall doesn’t mean that we have to automatically gut the budget (in bad years) or spend the surplus (in good years) for no other reason than values change (when values rose in 2005, the rate came down about 15 cents). We can trim the budget and be smart about our expenditures but the City still has schools to run, a government to operate and public safety people to pay. We cannot just stop doing these things.
October 25, 2007 at 10:13 am
Ok, we aren’t out of October and are already on Draft #5 of a
proposed budget for the next fiscal year (a budget which will not
be finalized until the late spring of 2008). This is a work in progress
and will be for some time.
Suggest interested citizens look not only at the tax rate in proposed
budget drafts, but also at the impact on the average residential tax bill.
Draft #5, for example, calls for $0.220 rate increase – which
would raise the average bill $21.95.
October 25, 2007 at 10:44 am
That is a $21.95 increase per year – less than two dollars a month.
October 29, 2007 at 3:13 pm
Andy & Steve,
Tight budgets are the best excuse to ask hard questions about what the city should and should not be spending money on. Now would be a good time to try and cut a few less-effective programs, allowing spending to fall along with property values.
October 29, 2007 at 3:59 pm
It is always a good time to ask hard questions about what the city
should and should not be spending money on.
Looking at a pie chart of Manassas expenditures, it is easy to note that
more than half our general revenues go to the school system,
followed by public safety and public works.
In FY 2007, for example, under “How $1 of Tax Revenue is Spent” —
Schools $0.562, Public Safety $0.165, Public Works $0.057,
Administration $0.052, PWC Shared Services $0.050, Debt/Capital
$0.025, Health and Human Services $0.025, Culture/Rec. $0.025, etc.
The issue becomes what specific items to cut and what impact
that would have on the citizens of Manassas. Hopefully Mr. Harrison,
you and others will be able to join us as our planning meetings
for the next fiscal year start.
October 30, 2007 at 1:55 pm
The MJM has reported decreased ESL students in the City and the last school budget also shown a decrease in the total student population. About five years ago the average cost per City school student was less than $10,000, now it’s closer to $14,000. In light of that and future expected decreases in school population, is there any room for the shared agreement to be altered to a fixed per student amount annually adjusted upward based on a COLA or change in CPI? Just a suggestion. The need for other City services (e.g. police, inspection) is going up.
November 7, 2007 at 9:12 am
FYI- There is a meeting of the city council tonight ( 5:30PM –
Wed. Nov 7th – second floor City Hall conference room) for
discussion of draft proposals for the FY 2009 budget. This
is an open meeting — the public IS invited.
November 7, 2007 at 11:12 pm
There is absolutely NO reason for property taxes (the amount citizens pay) to go up in 2008. There is such waste in city personnel that, if the City Manager actually supervised instead of worried about what citizens might say at Citizens’ Time, much more would be accomplished by this dedicated workforce. If this Council thinks that it has to raises taxes everytime, you might as well change your party affiliation. This city does not work as well as it could, and its employees resist efforts to improve.