Brian, would you please call the world?

Follow the way, present lean in.

President Rick, here.

Newton.

Blum, here.

T Dunn.

Here.

Joke?

Here.

And Burkeholder.

Here.

All right.

We just have one agenda item this evening, and it's to open a public hearing on the FY2027 proposed proposed property tax levy rate.

And amounts.

It affects all wards.

So I will open that at this time and ask if there's any public comment.

Yep, come on up.

Just state your name and ward or address.

My name is John D.

Blackman.

I live at 1334 East Ninth Street.

And I appreciate receiving this.

If the proposed tax increase goes into effect, I would like to see allocations more evenly distributed to the schools rather than the cities and the county.

That's just one citizen.

Just my opinion.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Blackman.

Is there anyone else from the public on this public hearing?

Thank you for having the meeting.

My name is Emmerich Shoymus.

I'm in Ward 6.

Um initially I was responding just to this letter on the property tax.

And I noticed a couple things that troubled me.

So I started doing some digging.

There's a clause here.

Okay, so that's the reason for the meeting.

That completely disagrees with the real estate professionals who say in 2016 up till date, you're showing between a one point, 1.8 and 1.9% property tax increase.

So I started to look a little deeper.

Umderman Jobgen knows me for several years, knows that I'm not afraid of uh voicing a complaint.

Davenport has a unique reputation in the state of Iowa as having the worst roads in the state, and as being fiscally not the most responsible.

Case in point.

Remember about three years ago we got the stop sign?

If you go anywhere else in Davenport, if you have an illuminated stop sign because of children, it's lit with LEDs all the way around.

We have a low wattage, single bulb on top.

The most of the times you can't even see.

So I'm sensitive to how the money is being spent.

When I went into the budget or your budget proposal, I was flabbergasted, and I'd like to ask every one of you an honest question.

Have you looked through all 473 pages?

We're just listening now.

This is a public hearing.

So by the same token, I think I can ask the question, right?

Have you looked at the budget?

You can ask the question.

We're again we're going to be able to do that.

But you don't have to answer.

Well, we'll just public hearing.

So we'll just listen to I would like to have a more responsive government for the city.

Thank you.

Um at a time when prices are skyrocketing, and social security has only gone up 2.8%.

I think it's exorbitant that you are anticipating a rise in our property tax values by 10%.

And not only that, but I I fail to understand some of the math that you have got on this front page.

On for instance, for the general non-agricultural, you've got a current property tax value of 86 million, 729, etc.

You're raising it to 91.

But when we are looking at the percentile rates, the tax rates, you're actually showing that it's going down.

This is the same problem that we had on the announcement that you sent out last year.

The numbers just do not make sense.

Nor can we justify or see where this money is going to go to.

We're just being dictated to that the taxes are going to go up and we're going to pay them or we lose our houses.

That's not acceptable.

Again, as the other gentleman said, we need to see some transparency, improved transparency in our government here in Davenport.

The last few years have been very rough for us as citizens.

I'm not even going to go into the history of it.

We all know what the problems have been here.

Now we need to see some improvement, and we've got some new faces on our council here.

And we really want to see some improvement in transparency.

We want to know before we are shelling out for these taxes.

Where do you intend on spending them?

Where are the primary places that this money is going to go?

I mean, that's that's basically what I've got to say, but something's gotta happen here because this we're just watching our taxes going up and up and up.

As the other gentleman said, Um, the streets are in dire shape.

They did two-thirds of our street seven years ago.

Seven years ago, never finished it.

The last third of the street that approaches Eastern is an absolute mess.

It's all broken up.

Um I've called on it, we get no response.

Where's this money going, gentlemen, other than having to pay for somebody fooling around in City Hall?

That's not acceptable.

We don't want to ever see it again.

I can't be any more adamant about that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else from the public on this public hearing?

All right.

Can I ask one more question?

Did I read the financial?

Hang on a second.

Can someone speak a second time at a public?

Oh, you're coming up anyway.

Oh, you're done.

I I think you get to speak once at a public hearing.

We we are meeting again at 5 30 in for our normal city council meeting.

Um so is there I'll just do one last call.

All right.

Seeing and hearing no one else, I was going to take a motion to move uh to adjourn the special meeting.

So moved.

Second.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Oh, okay.

Let me back up then.

I'll entertain a motion to close the public hearing.

So moved.

So second.

And the voice vote, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

All right.

Now is there a motion to adjourn?

So moved.

Second.

All right.

All in favor adjourning.

Say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed, same sign?

All right.

And we are meeting again at 5 30.

Normal council meeting.

If you want to stay around, I just wanted to.