Kalispell budget includes slight tax increase
The Kalispell City Council passed a string of resolutions Monday to set annual appropriations and property tax levies and adopt the city’s budget for fiscal year 2011-12.
Kalispell taxpayers will pay slightly more in taxes just to maintain essentially the same level of spending and city services as last year. That’s mainly because the city’s total assessed valuation decreased, City Manager Jane Howington said.
“When you lose value you have to spread more cost to a smaller group of people. That’s really what’s going on here,” Howington told council members. “Yes, every one of us including myself has a small increase in taxes, somewhere between $12 and $35 a year, to cover the same kind of expenses for government that we’ve had.”
Projected expenditures from the general fund will increase year-over-year from $8.96 million to $9.22 million.
Most of that increase is because of rising health insurance premiums for city employees and costs related to the consolidated 911 Center, Howington said.
Total appropriations authorized for fiscal year 2011-12 are $42.8 million. That includes a $1 million Brownfields grant from the Environmental Protection Agency and compares to $42.2 million approved for the last fiscal year.
Last year’s budget had an ending cash balance in the general fund of $1 million, better than initially projected. That’s up from an ending cash balance of about $200,000 several years ago.
Howington credited city staffers and department heads with doing everything they can to reign in expenditures and help rebuild the general fund’s ending cash balance, a goal city that officials set back in 2009.
“When I came in two years ago, I projected it would take five years to get a 15 percent minimum [ending cash balance],” Howington said. “This is two years later and we’re at 11 percent. With luck we’ll be at 15 percent at the end of this fiscal year.”
Council member Robert Hafferman was the only one to vote against any of the budget resolutions. Hafferman said the budget amounts to a tax increase on citizens.
“You can throw all these numbers around all you want,” Hafferman said. “There’s an increase in taxes, period.”
The total property-tax levy approved for fiscal year 2011-12 is 175.93 mills, the maximum possible levy, up from 170.34 mills the year before.
With the city’s decreased valuation and increased costs of doing business, council member Jim Atkinson said he thinks the public will understand council’s adoption of the budget.
“I’m a citizen of the great city of Kalispell, Montana, and if I have to pay $12 to $35 more next year for stable government, I’ll do it,” Atkinson said.
“There’s a whole list of things that have increased,” Atkinson said. “The public has to understand that costs to run a city have increased just the same as costs to run your household.”
The council could have adjusted the tax levy down to avoid the tax increase. That would have required additional spending cuts and undermined ongoing efforts to rebuild the general fund’s ending cash balance in exchange for only minimal savings to taxpayers, Howington said.
Mayor Tammi Fisher also voted in favor of the budget resolutions.
“I think it toes the line and what I believe was the appropriate thing to do as far as government and maintaining a balance that was essentially the same as last year,” Fisher said.
Reporter Tom Lotshaw may be reached at 758-4483 or by email at tlotshaw@dailyinterlake.com.