All right.

This special session of the Seed Rapids City Council will come to order.

I'd like to welcome those of you who are here for the special city council meeting on Tuesday, March 24th, 2026.

I'll note my colleague Tyler Olson is absent today as well as Councilmember Marty Hager.

I'll now accept a motion to approve the agenda.

Motion to approve.

Second.

Thank you.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Opposed.

All right.

The motion carries.

We will get started, Council.

It's now time for our public hearing.

And I'll remind everybody who wishes to speak today of a few matters just to ensure that we have an orderly meeting.

First, remain at the lectern.

If you have documents you need to share with us, give them the officer and she will get them to us.

You'll notice some lights on the on the podium there.

When it turns you have five minutes total when it turns yellow, you have one minute, and when it's red, we'll ask you to take your seat.

And please be aware that all comments must be directed to the matter of the public hearing.

So no obscene, abusive, loud, threatening, relevant comments will be allowed.

And then finally, so we can have an orderly meeting today.

We ask for no applause, booing, or other disruptions from the audience today.

Does the clerk have any written comments or objections in regard to the public hearing on our agenda?

Your Honor, there are three objections filed.

Three objections filed.

Thank you.

Public hearing will be held to consider the property tax revenue and property tax levy for our fiscal year 2027 budget.

Thank you, Mayor.

Good afternoon, Mayor and the Council.

Abidish Pande Finance Director.

So today the public hearing is about the proposed FY27 property tax levy and the revenue.

Just to give you some uh purpose and the background of this uh public hearing, as per the IO Accord Section 24.2A, uh the cities are required to um have this public hearing before the budgets gets approved or adopted in in um in a few weeks.

Basically, um this requires to further inform and notify the public of changes in property tax revenue, levy rates, and the any kind of related reasons for that increase or decrease.

Uh the county auditors, uh, they mail each taxpayer um showing the proposed city, county, and the school district property tax rates and revenue for the budget year.

Um subsequent to that mailing, the cities hold a separate public hearing um presenting city's maximum property tax levy rate and the revenue information.

Uh at this hearing, at this hearing, any residents or property owner of the city may present any objection or provide any uh uh arguments in favor of that property tax revenue and the levy rate.

Um this public hearing also cannot focus on other aspects of the budget or the full budget.

Um this is the stack payer statement that the property tax owners they received.

Um this notice was also published by the city for the public hearing based on the format that was prescribed by the state.

Um as you can see, there are three different columns in this uh tax statement.

The first column talks about the the current year, which is the fiscal year 2026 uh budget information.

Uh as per that uh column, you can see that the in fiscal year 26, the the city's total property tax revenue is around 128 million dollars, and the current levy rate is 16.65.

Uh the second column is basically it's called the effective property tax, uh, which what does that mean is basically if we kept the the 27 budget at the same level at 26.

Um, you would see the changes in the property tax levy rate, and which would be basically decrease from 1665 to 1635, only if we remain at the same level of FY26.

The third column talks about basically FY27 budget.

Uh as per the proposed budget, um, the property tax revenue uh will go from uh from 128 million to 130.4 million dollars.

However, the the city's property tax levy rate doesn't change from the current year, which is the 1665.

So one thing that I would like to highlight that basically the property tax levy rate remains the same from FY26 to FY27.

There is no property tax levy increase for proposed budget.

What also the increased revenue will fund items such as the liability property and vehicle insurance, debt payment, employee benefits such as the FICA, IPERS retirement, police and fire retirement, and health care benefits.

These are the uh large uh ticketed items.

This um there are some other items also that will be funded, such as the general government operations, but these are the some of the large ticketed items that will be funded from this revenue.

Also um property tax owners received uh along with their statement, they received um uh two examples showing basically the impact of property tax um levy rate on their proper uh on their pro on property taxes.

Uh basically this statement shows two examples.

Um if you were if um in a household sees and their property valuation goes by 10,000 dollars from 100,000 to 11,000 from FY26 to 27, they will see around 26 increase in their property taxes, and the percent change will be around 3%.

Such a uh that's on the residential side.

On the commercial side, if the in this example, if the property value increases by 30,000 from 300,000 to 330,000, they will see around 377 increase in their property tax from the previous year, and that's 11% change.