Clear Lake council sets date for maximum property tax levy hearing

CLEAR LAKE — The Clear Lake City Council earlier this week set the date of the public hearing as part of adopting the maximum property tax levy for the city’s Fiscal Year 2024 budget. By Iowa law, the council must hold a public hearing and pass a resolution adopting the maximum property tax dollars for the upcoming fiscal year’s budget.

City finance director Creighton Schmidt says the proposed budget leads to a slight decrease in the total city tax levy rate.  “That is staying basically the same. That with our debt service levy will have just a small decrease overall, so the 9.7 will be going down just a little bit.”

Cities and counties have been dealing with an error in the formula that determines some property tax rates, an error that is costing each city revenue that was originally anticipated. Schmidt says the city still isn’t certain about property tax revenues for the upcoming fiscal year, but he sees no reason not to move forward with setting the max levy.  “Of course there will be some impacts to all of these numbers as far as the dollar amounts when we do see the new taxable valuations. The county has until March 9th to re-do the taxable valuations given the new Senate file, so they will make those new changes and we’ll get moving on our budget, and we’ll get it all out and get the process moving.”

The council set the max levy hearing for their March 6th meeting.