Bloomington’s property tax rate is closer to decreasing next year, and so will the Bloomington Public Library’s, after the city council OK’d preliminary plans at a special session Monday night.
Initially, the two tax rates were set to be voted on together, but council member Tom Crumpler motioned to separate the votes into two separate items on the agenda.
The first vote, for the city property tax rate, was close — 5-4 in favor. Council members Sheila Montney, Kent Lee, Nick Becker and Crumpler voted against it.
The tax levy will increase 4.93%, capturing an additional $1.1 million in revenue if it meets final approval at the council’s Dec. 11 meeting. The tax rate would go down about 0.06%.
Nick Becker, who represents parts of northeast Bloomington, said he has talked with all sorts of people across all political viewpoints. And many of them, he said, think the city should reduce the rate further.
"I have met enough people that are saying, ‘I just can’t do this,’ across all different demographics, that I think we need to do more than we’ve presented so far," Becker said to finance director Scott Rathbun. "And the reason I’m confident in pushing that, is frankly because of you. I trust that you and your staff can manage saving that additional and taking us down to not using any of that EAV increase because you guys are very good at what you do.”
Montney, who represents eastern Bloomington, gave similar reasoning. She said it's important to have "empathy, humility and constraint" to understand how people are living in Bloomington and to further reduce property taxes.
Council member Cody Hendricks, who represents central Bloomington, voted "yes," calling the measure a compromise. He said people want the best of both worlds: lower taxes and more projects and services. But that's not entirely possible, he said.
"We can't do all things, right? It'd be great as a leadership to say, 'We're going to fund all these pensions, we're going to do all these projects, we're going to increase our services...and we're going to cut taxes lower,' which will significantly impact us many, many years down the road," said Hendricks.
"An easy vote would be that I could just say 'no' and hope that our city manager and staff could figure that out. But I think a leadership vote is that we vote to lower our rate, try to tighten the belt in areas that we can, and obviously we are seeing an increase in the EAV (equalized assessed valuation) that all of us are facing, including me and probably all of us on the council, and try and do what we can."
Library rate
Meanwhile, the public library's property tax rate is sliding down about 0.02% after a 6-3 vote supporting the measure. Montney, Becker and Lee voted against it. The tax levy also will increase 4.93%, securing about $309,000 in revenue.
Rathbun told the council despite the rate decrease, homes that are appraised 11% higher this year — to reflect the city’s growth in EAV — would pay slightly more. The owner of a $165,000 home would pay about $7 more next year and the owner of a $200,000 home would pay about $10 more under the proposal, he said.
Overall, it’s a levy request of about $30 million for the city and library combined, and a property tax rate reduction of 0.7%.
The council will reconvene on Dec. 11 to officially vote on passing the levies and rate decreases.
