Okay.

Good evening, everybody.

Let's uh convene the uh meeting of the finance committee for Monday, October 27, 2025 in advance.

Please excuse my voice.

But know that this is about 300 percent better than it was Friday.

So can you imagine?

Um it uh pays to have a fourth grader who brings home uh bugs from school.

So um let's start by uh considering the minutes, the meeting minutes from uh the finance committee's July 21st, 2025 finance committee hearing.

Is there a motion to approve?

So moved.

Motion's been made.

Is there a second?

Second.

Motion's been made and seconded.

Any discussion?

Hearing none, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed, I have it.

Thank you.

We've got three other items tonight.

The one that I think we should focus on is our our council budget priorities most of all.

But before doing that, I'd like to briefly um turn to item number uh well, items number three and four, my communication regarding property tax matters.

And um Director Mahoney shared some uh materials that I'd like to give her the opportunity to um at least uh address and uh perhaps the committee might make a motion to accept into the record of our meeting so that they can appear in the meeting minutes.

Um Director Mahoney's explanation of property taxes.

I sent around the copies of this to all council members before the um earlier today.

Um so I hope council members have received that and can take a look.

But Director Mahoney, would you like to briefly outline what you shared and your your you know your purpose in in sharing that explainer?

And um, you know, I don't can we uh display anything on this committee screen.

If we can I'll share or we'll get we'll get this document shared.

Thank you.

But go ahead, Director Mahoney.

Uh sure, yeah.

Um just I I understand property taxes are confusing, they're confusing to myself as well as everybody else.

And so um I had put this uh together years ago and I just updated it for the city of Lakewood um information.

Um it's just good to know where your property tax is, how it breaks out, um, what the allocation is, and a little bit about how it's calculated.

So um the front part of it talks about the allocation where you can see the schools receive 52.55 percent of your property tax payments, and the city uh 24.35.

Um the rest uh county, metro parks, trice, and the port authority.

Um and then I have an explanation about homestead exemption, um, and that's who is eligible to apply for that, and the um the stipulations on that.

One one thing I would like to say about homestead exemption on the second page.

So there are there are three different um discounts, if you if you want to say that, to a person's property tax.

One is the homestead exemption that you have to apply for.

The other is the 10 percent rollback and the two and a half percent rollback.

All three of those um reductions are paid, repaid to the city by the state.

So the city isn't um out that money uh per se.

Uh the state reimburses us.

And if you see um the homestead exemption reimbursement in 2025 from the state was just over 276,000.

I did a rough calculation, and um I believe it's about 440 households in the city of Lakewood have the homestead exemption.

Uh I wonder if there are many more eligible for it that do not um have not applied and have not received it.

Um the main thing is uh for that homestead exemption is you have to be the owner of the pro owner occupied of the property.

So um just I would uh ask counsel in your travels if you know you know someone, especially if they're over 65 and they are a lower income uh household to go ahead and I would encourage them to apply for that homestead exemption.

Uh I'm not sure if many more are eligible that don't that haven't applied or um if 440 is is a good number for the city.

Um so then on the second page it goes through all the millage that the city uh assesses, which is 17.4 mills, and then you can see in 2025 we received just over 27 million dollars in property tax.

The important thing to point out on that is how important property tax is to the city.

Um you can imagine, especially uh the current conversations about um inside millage, that's that uh almost just over five million dollars goes towards our bond retirement.

And um if we did not receive that uh would be uh it would be detrimental to the city.

Um pardon me when I say Danielle, are you able to scroll down?

If okay, if if and when you can, that'd be great, but if not, we'll we'll we'll refer to it.

Go ahead, Director Mahoney.

That's okay.

Um and then uh just below that it talks about the inside millage, and again, that's been the conversation down in Columbus, whether they're going to mess with our inside millage or or not.