The Soldotna City Council adopted a resolution that would set the rate of levy for property taxes for the city of Soldotna at 0.5 mills for the 2023 Fiscal Year. State Statute and Soldotna Municipal Code require the city to annually set the rate of mill levy by Resolution prior to June 15.
City Manager Stephanie Queen told the city council:
“We, at the work session, presented a biennial budget adjustment. That budget was prepared based on a mill rate of 0.5 mills, which is the current mill rate and the historical rate over the past several years. At this point, we did not recommend any change.”
Property tax revenues have been adjusted in this update based on an increase in taxable assessed values provided by the Kenai Peninsula Borough. Taxable assessed values for FY23 are $631,084,144 compared to $602,198,455 in FY22. The property tax projection for FY23 has been updated to $337,000, which also includes a small amount for personal property and motor vehicle tax.
This budget proposes no change to the property tax mill levy of 0.5 mills or the general City sales tax rate of 3% for FY23.
A proposed amendment by Council Member Dave Carey would have reduced the mill rate 0.5 to 0.1 mills.
Carey’s reasoning was:
“Last year, I tried to do away with the property tax as a whole and there were numerous members of the council who said, ‘no, if you get rid of it, it will be so hard to put it back in.’ What was also presented to us was also presented to us is just from out of area sales tax in terms of people who buy. We’re going to take in more revenue from that than this entire property tax brings to the city. We can reduce this so that business owners and individuals who do have to pay property taxes in the city will pay a little bit less and, again, the effects of this on our overall budget is relatively manageable.”
His proposed amendment failed, but the resolution proposing no change to the property tax mill levy of 0.5 mills passed.
Click here for more information. (NOTE: click 051122 Supplement Items [Work Session] for copy to full document if you’re unable to see PDF below).
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