Election Day is a little less than three weeks away, but even at this stage of an election campaign, nerves can become a bit frayed.
At Wednesday night’s Fishers City Council Finance Committee meeting, Chairman John Weingardt provided a spirited defense of the property tax increase built into the 2020 city budget. As the panel discussed the final budget approval vote set for the regular city council meeting Monday, that sparked the tax discussion.
The 2020 city spending plan includes 2 cents per $100 of assessed valuation property tax increase, funding road repairs, including repaving in the Burberry Place neighborhood, where the concrete streets built years ago are beginning to come apart.
Weingardt
“If we wouldn’t have done this, this incremental increase, we wouldn’t be doing these roads,” Weingardt said. “It’s that simple. All these folks bantering about, about a tax increase, I mean, we’re doing it for a reason. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. We have to balance our budget. We can’t borrow away like the federal government does.”
He emphasized that the road work in Burberry Place, along with other parts of the city experiencing deteriorating concrete, would not be possible without this tax increase.
“In order for us to do anything, there comes a point in time where we have to invest, and if people don’t want this tax increase, I invite everybody wearing a purple shirt to go over to Burberry Place and knock on their doors, since they’ve got such a voice, and tell them, we don’t want your roads repaired. I’m tired of it,” Weingardt told Finance Committee members.
According to Weingardt, the one-year tax increase means the city will pay for this work all in one year, with no need to issue debt in the form of a bond to pay for it.
“This isn’t easy,” according to Weingardt. “We’re in an election year. We’ve got the guts enough to do something to take care of our constituents. I really believe that this is the right thing for us to do.”
Moeller
Finance Committee member Eric Moeller added that with construction costs rising every year, the city will save in the long run by doing this road work in 2020.
Democrats running for Fishers City Council have been critical of property tax increases the city has enacted over the past five years.
City Controller Lisa Bradford shared numbers she has crunched on the tax increases for years 2015-2020. She says the tax rate has gone from 62 cents per $100 of assessed valuation in 2015 to an estimated 71 cents in 2020, meaning the tax rate has gone up 9 cents over five years. For a family owning a home valued at $207,000, and assuming the value has not increased, the actual additional tax on that home would have increased a total of $94 over that five-year period, according to Bradford.
Toward the end of the meeting, Councilman Eric Moeller asked about the 911 emergency service income tax increase the Fishers council has approved. Bradford said enough local councils have approved the increase and it will go into effect for all of Hamilton County in 2020.
Moeller asked about a Hamilton County Council vote, and was told by Finance Committee Chairman Weingardt that the county council has decided not to vote on the 911 income tax increase.
“Another show of good faith by our county council on public safety,” Moller said, somewhat sarcastically.