Last week Burnsville’s City Council voted 3-2 against a 1% tax increase for 2010 and many of us hailed that decision as an important one. Unfortunately, while Burnsville’s City Council made the right decision, Apple Valley’s apparently did not as they unanimously voted for a 0.94% increase to support city operations when the people in their city do not have enough money for even the basic necessities of life.
Again, being that I was sick and busy finding out that we’re having a baby boy I didn’t bother to watch the Apple Valley City Council meeting online like I normally would but I promise to get back into the swing of things even though the rest of my September and October are extremely busy. But thankfully the Star Tribune covered the story and printed this article which states, rather ridiculously, “Apple Valley has joined the list of cities unwilling to ask its citizens to share in the pain.”
The article mentions that Apple Valley plans to:
To help meet its proposed budget, the city will leave four jobs open for 2010: a police sergeant, a police officer, a code-enforcement officer and a street maintenance worker. The position of parks department receptionist has been eliminated and will be filled by two part-time employees.
The position of deputy fire chief remains open, and city staff members have recommended the position be reclassified as a fire training officer for 2010.
In addition, while the city normally would be replacing six police cars at a cost of $25,000 each, the proposed budget calls for replacing three.
While I applaud the $370,000 staff savings and the police car replacement costs being kept down, it seems to be doing very little else to curb spending and keep the tax increases at 0% where they fucking belong. The city says that they are not looking to reduce the level of services citizens expect on a day-to-day basis but citizens do expect a reduction of service level when it’s already overgrown with unnecessary expenditures–especially when it means that they already have less money in their pockets to pay bills and support their own lives–nevermind the poorly run operations within the city.
Do you think that it’s right that the Apple Valley City Council voted to raise property taxes ~1% when other nearby cities are voting to keep it at 0%? Do you think that the city should have done more to cut services instead of claiming that people expect a certain level of service they plan to unnecessarily maintain? Whatever you think about Apple Valley’s decision to raise property taxes ~1%, go ahead and comment on and let them hear what you have to say.
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September 14th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Minneapolis and St. Paul are looking at 6.6% and 6% increases respectively for 2010. Nobody likes their taxes going up, but it could be worse.
September 14th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
I guess what I was trying to say, unsuccessfully I suppose, was that if you’re going to raise taxes it better be for good reason. I don’t know the specifics surrounding the rise in Mpls and St Paul’s taxes but if they’re increasing them to provide unnecessary services or to subsidize failures in other departments which provide services not required (bad example based on the content above, but you get the idea: decreases in inputs to the general fund due to poorly performing liquor stores) then there’s a real problem.
City Councils should direct staff to make absolutely every single cut they can for non-essential services (staff at liquor stores, senior centers, parks, etc) before refusing to fill police department positions.
September 14th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
It takes balls for any city to jack up taxes but my city did so by way of raising our water & sewer rates – they have to pay for the $7 MILLION sewer improvement somehow (apparently they couldn’t wrangle some stimulus bucks for that). Still, there’s no excuse for any sort of tax increase when everyone else is forced to cut back.
September 14th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Any tax increase is unacceptable right now. I’m still feeling the pain of the prior 5 years increases. All I see around me are wasted tax dollars.
Also, is that a 1% for everyone. Or is a 5% for me and a few other sucker asses?
I’m really tired of it. Maybe Tim can cover my share since it could be worse and all???
September 14th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Sornie wrote:
I suppose that if you have well water you’d be pissed if you had to pay taxes to pay for city water services. Yes, there is the whole “pay for the fire protection” argument among others, but I think that taxing those that are hooked up to city water by raising rates is a viable way to collect the money. That said, I don’t know the specifics surrounding the improvements and I wonder if they were absolutely needed. If it’s for a build out to support growth, perhaps they should have considered other ways to fund it.
September 14th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
JP wrote:
It’s possible that you may be the 8% affected by the tax increase differently than the majority. The Star Tribune article did not go into specifics and while I’m sure I could get the information from the city, I don’t know if it’s worth it. I suggest e-mailing the City Clerk (Pamela Gackstetter at info@ci.apple-valley.mn.us) and asking for more documentation on it.
September 14th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
Bill–Kick ass…congrats on jr.!!! We have a two year old and a six month old, so we are knee deep in the ride ourselves. All I can say is that if you’re like me you will be tired all the time, but also happy as all sheot. I don’t know how to describe it, but it feels like all of your emotions are expanded and amplified. Life has more meaning and the big picture sort of becomes more clear. Coolest (and hardest) fucking experience ever. I’m done ranting now, but congrats!