Tax levy to remain at $500K for McMillan
By Hub City Times staff
MCMILLAN – During a special meeting held Dec. 7 at the McMillan fire station, town of McMillan electors voted a second time to keep the 2019 tax levy at $500,000.
The meeting was called after a majority of electors present at a Nov. 13 meeting lowered the proposed tax levy by nearly $166,000—from $665,815 to $500,000.
Citing low turnout for the Nov. 13 vote, town officials scheduled a second vote asking taxpayers for reconsideration of the $500,000 levy.
Nearly 250 electors turned out at the fire hall to weigh in. When the votes were tallied, ten electors’ made the determination, 128-118, not to reconsider a different levy.
With the levy remaining at $500,000, town officials will now have to make adjustments to the original budget to accommodate the difference in taxpayer contributions.
“We have to figure out how we are going to handle this, how we are going to move forward,” said McMillan chair Carolyn Opitz. “Because our levy – that’s our working money that we have – by being reduced $165,000 there are going to have to be some cuts.
“The thing that people don’t really understand is that we have most of our things, like the roads, the general transportation aids, the shared revenue – those are usually figured over a three-year period. At the end of that three-year period (it will be gone). We’re going to get that amount now. We’ve already been awarded it for 2019, and then 2020, but that will be the end of the three-year period. We will have that amount of money to try to make up so we will be hurting, so to speak, even just maintenance. There will not be any new projects; there won’t be any more blacktopping. It just can’t happen; there just isn’t going to be the money.
“We figure that we get about two percent of our income, by the time we pay all of the schools and all of the other things – the ambulance. We need $85,000 a year for the library fund… that is over a three-year period. At the end of that period, then there is going to have to be a decision, because that $85,000, we may not be able to continue. There are just so many things like that people don’t realize.”
Town officials will meet again on Dec. 10 to begin work on budget adjustments.
“We do have the option of borrowing the difference, but if you do you lose on that,” Opitz said. “We’ll have to go over this budget and see what we’re going to do to make it work.”
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