The Kenai City Council adopted a resolution fixing the rate of levy of property tax for the fiscal year commencing July 1, 2022 and ending June 30, 2023. Kenai Municipal Code requires that the rate of levy of property tax be set annually not later than the tenth day of June. The Council has recently adopted the City of Kenai 2023 Annual Budget, which estimates property tax revenue based upon a tax rate of 4.35 mills.
The proposed rate of levy of property tax for FY2023, tax year 2022, is 4.35 and will result in $435 in taxes being paid for each $100,000 of taxable assessed property value. The rate is unchanged and will generate necessary property taxes to support the adopted FY23 budget. The last mill rate change for the city was in FY2015.
A proposed amendment, that failed to pass, would have lowered the mill rate to 4.25 mills.
Council Member James Baisden said:
“What a tenth of a mill rate equates to, based on the numbers that the finance director, the impact on the overall budget would be estimated at $93,390. The reason why I take the tenth was to try to take it a small bit at a time because of the inflationary situation that we’re in and dealing with the budgetary issues that, again, if we’re still doing good over the next few years, we should look at it again and again. Everything that we have done this year, we’ve set up our capital projects in a good way, we’ve met the needs of the city, the only thing that I see that we’ve missed was our taxpayers and try to give them back a little bit if we can.”
The impact on the budget would be a $93,390 increase or decrease in property tax revenue. The citizen taxpayers of the Kenai would save $88,494 and the remaining $4,896, which is the tax on 43.56 property, would be a revenue gain for the State of Alaska.
Voting to amend the mill rate to 4.25 mills failed on a 5-2 vote, but the resolution fixing the rate at 4.35 mills passed.