This work session continued the discussion of a draft code update for property tax exemptions, focusing on modifications to the economic development exemption and the primary residence/permanent place of abode exemption. Staff presented proposed language and council members provided input on exemption percentages, eligibility criteria, administrative processes, and public outreach strategies.
Thank you, Mayor. Um, I guess first, uh huge thank you to Elise for putting together kind of the revision of the ordinance that was in the packet as well as the cheat sheet of the key points here. Um I don't have a real defined outline of how we want to go with this. My hope was to kind of use the cheat sheet and let you all discuss and provide input. Um again, I look at this uh ordinance draft as kind of a working document that we can adjust and um tweak as you see fit. Um couple of points I wanted to highlight are so the the primary resident exemption uh so the current draft language is both point four. The second under primary resident personal permanent place of a vote on the G sheet there. The fourth bullet point says current draft languages phase seventy-seven percent or an amount equal to the annual levy for municipal purposes of primary residence and the permanent place of a vote owned and occupied by the taxpayer, maybe exempt from the remaining taxable value of the property. So we left it at the seventy-seven percent, just based on what the conversation was. Um that certainly could be adjusted. Um I'll go into that later. So that's in there. Uh, some things that we kind of touched on, but didn't get real explicit onto is the modifications to the economic development exemption. And so where we more or less landed on was we remove the geographic barriers of it, and we just it's essentially defined as any new structure or a significant renovation, which is defined in the code as a twenty-five percent renovation of any facility, and that's by a dollar figure. Um we remove the specific housing language with the understanding that a new structure could be a house. So in theory, you could get the 10-year economic development exemption, or you could get the primary place of a boat exemption. And I think I think there's good reasoning behind doing that is that not necessarily every housing unit is going to be owned by a primary homeowner. It certainly could be a rental unit. And so, from a tax relief perspective, uh cost of living perspective, affording that 10-year exemption is beneficial to other than primary home exemption. There's a couple caveats is that we do have people currently in the program. And those any changes that we make to the economic development exemption, those existing properties would not necessarily be grandfathered into the new language. So it's like a new starting point, if you will. So for example, there are some residential units that were constructed under the three-year exemption. They would not necessarily be eligible for an additional 10 years. It would be hey, you were you happened under the three-year, anything that happens now is under the tenure. There's really no no change or no no difference for anybody currently receiving the tenure economic development exemption. Um again, it would just be new applications for new projects from the date of adoption moving forward. Um again, I guess just kind of before we jump into letting you all discuss how and where you want to go with it. I think some things that are relevant to discuss our timeline. Um I think we need to my recommendation would be to have this button down this fall, so that prior to January one tax assessments occurring, we should have it figured out what the exemption values are. Um we have a date in there of January 15 deadline to apply for the exemptions, and so we need to give people time on the front end to apply for the exemptions. So in a perfect world, we'd have this thing buttoned up by probably October, middle of October, so that people would have that two-month window, I guess three-month window from October, November, December, January, to get their exemptions filled out, so we can help people make sure it's done right, do some PR campaign to get it out and get everybody aware of what's going on. We've got a fair number of snowbirds who would this would still be applicable for. So we've got some ideas of how to administer the the forms and whatnot. Can I hop in on that one too? Just to take everyone a little context on that. Um, the goal with that adjustment is to kind of solve the problem we've had this year of the late file senior citizen exemption applications having no real guardrails around them. So the goal with that would be to have everything live under one administrative process with one set of dates. Um, so that basically you get told because um as a practice, our finance department does put everyone's exemptions on their assessment notices. They aren't required by a law to do that. So this draft in front of you would codify that. It would say, yes, your your exemptions are listed, and when you get your assessment notice, you should be looking to see if you got the exemption you were expected to get. Um, and if you and then if you see something that's wrong, you can appeal it. You can come to the board of equalization and say, hey, I should have gotten a primary home exemption, or I should have gotten a senior citizen exemption, but I didn't. Um that's kind of the thought process behind it. Um I guess I'm gonna go back to one other thing. Um the percent recent reduction in taxes, 77, 75, 100, 90, whatever. There's no difference other than that 100%. 100%, there's a lot of language in the code that would be changed. Frankly, the the senior exemption, the firefighter exemption, a lot of these exemptions related to residential properties are completely moot if the primary place of abode exemption is applied at 100%.