The City of Bloomington plans to hold the line on property taxes next year, assuming the city sees modest economic growth.
The Bloomington City Council will vote Tuesday night on a $20.5 million tax levy for 2020. The meeting is moved to Tuesday because of the Veterans Day holiday.
City Manager Tim Gleason said he's encouraged to see some projected growth in the tax base, even if it's just above 1%.
“We still are a community that is growing even though it is less than what we may have expected,” Gleason said. “The trend is upward, it’s modest growth and I’ll take that in the state of Illinois.”
The city’s estimated tax rate would drop slightly from $1.0860 to $1.0839 per $100 assessed valuation.
The projected growth would give the city an additional $225,000 in tax money which city staff said would enable the city to keep up with the rising costs of maintaining infrastructure.
Gleason added council members have stressed to him they don't want to increase property taxes.
“The elected officials have made it pretty clear they want to hold the taxes on our community, especially the property tax rate,” he said.
Library Levy, Expansion
The council will also consider a $4.94 million levy for the Bloomington Public Library. That levy would slightly drop the current tax rate to $0.26080, while projecting 1.3% growth in taxable land values.
Gleason said the city council is agreeable to some sort of funding help for what he called a scaled-down library expansion. Gleason said the city doesn't have a hard cap, but he believes the city could help plug funding gaps for a project in the $10 million to $12 million range.
He said the city could pair the library expansion with several other long-awaited wish list projects, such as renovations to O'Neil Pool or an additional east-side fire station that could be paid for in part by selling bonds. He said with some bonds set to go off the books in the coming years, it could be done with minimal tax impact.
“The council wants to do it all for their community, as do I as their city manager,” Gleason said. “So we are looking very hard at trying to find no impact and at the very least low impact to the residents of the community.”
The library is expected to hire an architect to come up with a site plan in the coming months.
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