Question from Constituent in Benton County

Original question posted under "What steps would I recommend if we had to reduce the budget by tomorrow?"

Anonymous said...
What can be done to help alleviate some of our proprety taxes?I talk with some of my friends in Sartell and St Cloud, and they pay much less in property taxes than we do in Sauk Rapids. Why is that? Is there anything that can be done?

This is another great question and one that I hear on almost a daily basis in my profession as a Realtor and of course hear it regularly while campaigning. Perhaps a little historical perspective may help. When I was a county commissioner from 1987-92 we set our budgets so that we would maintain parity with our neighbors in Stearns Co. and that is a matter of public record. I believe serval events occured which affected your taxes in Sauk Rapids; our city has a very high percentage of the commercial tax base tied up in tax increment districts where any increase in tax revenue caused by an increase from a commercial developement goes to HRA and not the county, school, or city, these will sometime run out and we will hopefully see those taxes go to the local units of government instead of HRA. There is nothing wrong with trying to attract new businesses to the county and we must continue to try to do this but we do have understand that we do have a larger than normal portion of our tax base tied up. On the county level we must stress more intergovernmental cooperation and better consolidation of services; an example of this is the new county jail I believe we should have gone in with Stearns Co. and built a joint facility, this would have been much more taxpayer friendly. With our metropolitan area being part of 3 counties 4 cities and a number of townships we must have better cooperation and consolidation between local units to preserve current service levels at affordable tax rates. I could give you many more examples but I hope this gives you an idea of my analysis of the situation. Finally we must use those techniques stated in my blog and also make sure we stay away from new expenses especially those that require an ongoing annual appropriation. My hope is over time these type of steps will close the gap between Benton and Stearns counties taxes.