At this afternoon’s Soldotna Chamber Luncheon, the Charter Commission discussed the City of Soldotna Proposed Municipal Charter and how it will affect Soldotna residents if it is voted for in October.
One major issue concerning residents is how this change will affect taxes. Chair of the Soldotna Charter Commission, Scott Davis…
Davis: “It does allow the city residents to vote on how we want to be taxed. If home rule doesn’t pass, they can expect their property tax to go up and that’s what we’re trying to avoid. We’re trying to spread the burden out of our costs around our city with everybody that does business within the city, not just city residents.”
On October 4, the proposal for Soldotna to become a home rule city will be on the ballots. If voters chose to approve this change, it will be effective when the elections are certified, approximately a week and a half afterward.
Davis: “If it does pass, we’ll become home rule and it’ll allow us to make small changes, like if we want to remove the moratorium on a non-prepared food tax, we can do that, and that will spread out the burden of taxation to everybody that comes to our city.”
If the proposal fails as it did in the past, the commission will have one more year to make changes and place it on the ballot for a vote of the people one last time in 2017.