Whitefish Council continues to examine budget

Whitefish City Council on Monday will hold its second budget work session.

The total proposed budget for fiscal year 2024 is $49.3 million compared with last year's approved budget of $53.4 million.

If adopted, the budget would result in a home with a market value of about $526,000 seeing an estimated increase of about $80 or 10% on the city's portion of the tax bill. Property tax owners last year saw a roughly $98 decrease in their bills.

Council meets at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall, 418 E. Second St. Council will review the budgets for several departments and then provide direction to city staff.

The preliminary budget for fiscal 2024 includes an increase in collections to cover the roughly $380,000 decrease in additional property tax relief from the resort tax.

City Manager Dana Smith in her memo to Council said that while intentions are to always keep property tax increases to a minimum, this year’s budget presents a challenge with the change in property tax relief from the resort tax. She points out that last year’s budget included a decrease in property taxes, as did the prior year, but last year’s budget relied heavily on resort tax relief to achieve that.

“When considering proposed changes to property taxes and assessments in FY24, it is important to recall the financial impacts from prior year budgets,” Smith said. “The ability to provide such a significant reduction in property taxes was due to the considerable increase in additional property tax relief from resort tax collections.”

Resort tax collections for fiscal 2023, which determine the amount of tax relief for this year's budget, are projected to decrease by 13% over the prior year, providing for tax relief of $2.5 million. The total reduction in mills estimated for this year's budget is 46 mills compared to 58 mills in fiscal 2023.

A 32% increase in resort tax collections in fiscal year 2022 was mostly due to inflationary factors.

In fiscal year 2021 total resort tax collections were $4.79 million, while in fiscal 2022 they jumped to $6.3 million and the preliminary budget for fiscal 2024 sets them at $6.79 million.

As required by the resort tax regulations, the collections in excess of the budget must be returned to property taxpayers as additional tax relief in the following year.

The city will adopt the final budget once property valuations come in from the state in August.

Features Editor Heidi Desch may be reached at 758-4421 or hdesch@dailyinterlake.com.