(Spirit Lake)– The Dickinson County Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 this (Tues.) morning to adopt the budget for the upcoming fiscal year. It sets the general levy at $2.45 per $1,000 of valuation with the rural levy at a little more than $1.76 per $1,000.
Patrick Kelly of Okoboji was among those addressing the supervisors during a public hearing, saying taxing entities need to dial back even more given what’s going on with the markets…
“A lot of people are on fixed incomes and a lot of them lost a lot of money on their investments in the last few weeks. Hopefully we, as a county, can move forward and particularly as a state. I think that the people who are elected, the legislators, are paying very close attention to what’s going on.”
Supervisor Steve Clark says the county is walking a very fine line given the challenges they have…
“I’m sure we’ve all had numerous discussions with constituents, with organizations, trying to determine what a fair tax would be to be able to retain the services that we have. Whatever we set the tax levy rate at this year, that becomes our new ceiling. And if we have more than two percent growth, well no, more than three percent growth rate next year, and I believe that’s taken from an average of the two-year assessments, then we have to reduce that whatever rate we set by an automatic three percent. We can reduce it further but the levy we approve now becomes our new ceiling. We can’t go up if something happens. We can come down and we’re mandated to go down if there’s above the three percent valuation increase.”
Clark added residents need to be aware of levy rates being proposed by other taxing entities in the county as well. He says the significant increases in assessments also continues to hit property taxpayers hard.
