... Which Will only Partially Defray the Costs of Raising Them!

The City of Ludington Daily News (COLDNews) city hall reporter Kevin Braciszewski once again trumpets what sounds like good news in an article headlined:  Ludington tax rates to dip due to Headlee.  Many citizens and Ludington property owners may read this and think "Great, I'm going to be paying less in taxes."  But that's not the case, in fact those in the downtown district will actually be paying out more in taxes on average due to what the city is proposing to do in their July council meetings.  Here's what Kevin's article says:

Ludington’s property tax rates are set to drop — a tiny amount — due to Headlee Amendment rollbacks.

The Ludington City Council is scheduled Monday to have first presentations of ordinances to set the tax rates for the operating millage, Police Pension Fund millage and Downtown Development Authority (DDA) millage.

City Manager John Shay informed the councilors that the Police Pension Fund rate would stay the same as last year at 1.1501 mills.

The city’s general operating millage is set to be reduced from 11.5675 mills to 11.5513 mills, or 0.0162 mills due to the Headlee Amendment.

Shay said the city’s levy for the Refuse Fund will also decrease from 2.7762 mills to 2.7723 mills.

The Headlee Amendment requires local governments to reduce tax rates when taxes, due to property value increases, rise faster than the rate of inflation. Headlee limits the amount taxes can rise each year to an amount that is equal to the rate of inflation or 5 percent, whichever is less. Under the amendment, if property taxes rise faster than inflation, the tax rate must be reduced to keep the amount of taxes collected in line with the inflation rate.

Shay noted that the city’s overall taxable values decreased by $6.9 million due to the state law eliminating personal property from the tax rolls.

But he said a large number of real property sales have occurred in Ludington in the last year has resulted in the taxable value of many properties becoming uncapped by an amount higher than the 0.9 percent rate of inflation [end of article].

John Shay, as is typical, is great at marketing and great at using the seasoned city hall beat reporter as a propaganda tool.  To the journeyman journalist's credit, he does explain the basics about the Headlee Amendment in the third to the last paragraph without mentioning Shay once, alerting us to the fact that the local property taxes rose faster than inflation and necessitated the rollback.

Also the COLDNews electronic edition article fails to note that the city council is scheduled to set a "Truth-in-Taxation" hearing for the July 24th meeting at the July 10th meeting in order to raise the DDA millage rate from the Headlee-rollbacked 1.6039 rate up to a 1.6057 rate.  To do that, they must spend all of the 0.0018 mil increase on advertising the hearing in the newspaper plus a bit extra!

Consider, that the city projects $43,600 from the DDA millage at the current rate, the jump from 1.6039 to 1.6057 millage rates will result in just under $49 of additional tax revenue coming from the downtown district.  That cannot even come close to the rate the COLDNews will charge the City for the statutorily required public notice in the newspaper of record.  Is there anybody out there that still thinks this city is using their resources wisely?

Is the Downtown Development Authority that racked for more funds that they will have the general fund of the city use hundreds of dollars of taxpayer money in order to get them nearly $50 in extra taxes from our shopkeepers?  Thank God, it's going to the propaganda mill of city hall.

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CLARIFICATION ADDENDUM:  As a standard for a Truth in Taxation Notice it states "The notice [in the local paper] cannot be smaller than 8 column inches by 4 horizontal inches."  

The COLDNews charges a flat rate of $17.17 per column inch.  As 4 horizontal inches is two separate columns the minimal cost for the notice is $17.17 X 8 X 2 = $274.72.  In order to squeeze an extra $49 from the downtown.  In six years, they will finally realize a profit if we don't consider all of the extra costs behind this TIT hearing, including the time wasted by the clerk, treasurer, CDD, and city manager (all who earn more than $40 per hour in wages and benefits) in proposing this.

Very good report again X. And wouldn't mind you representing this article to the LDN readers forum for publishing either, as it directly points out the exact facts of how Shay operates the city around here. Let the rest of the taxpayers know what a fraud this situation is so they realize the truth.

If they're not clever enough to pick up the story tonight from the meeting, I'll strongly consider that option tomorrow. 

A TIT hearing.

I will let that stand as amusing enough without making further comment.

Here's the headgear you need for the next city council meeting:

like my X- wife used to say, you've got to spend money to save money. In this case it's spend money to make money. That's the problem with government. It's run like a monarchy not like a business. The city officials are OK with this type of transaction because it's not their money that is being wasted.  Thanks X for again clarifying just how stupid local politicians are. It seems as tho these politicians are giving stupid people a bad name.

I brought up this odd disparity earlier tonight at the city council meeting in my initial comment.  You will be in disbelief how they justified why they needed to increase property taxes, and then unanimously voted for passing the resolution. 

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