Budget Background

After we have gone through the budget work sessions I will be laying out my detailed budget. This will include a further tax cut. As many of us know the County Assessor has come through Isanti and raised our property valuations. The net affect of all this is that Isanti, as City, has had a 7% increase in property tax values. This means there will be a significant increase in tax revenue owed the City, School District, County and State. This however will not be fully in affect until all the delinquent taxes from foreclosed properties is paid. This could be 3 months or 3 years.

This also means that we need to continue our path of cutting taxes to stay competitive in our region. The statistics below show just how much work we have to do to lower our taxes:


City----------City Tax-----Total Tax

Cambridge-----1,171---------2,423

East Bethel-----578----------1,807

Isanti----------1,197---------2,453

North Branch----713---------2,387

Princeton------1,141---------2,772

St. Francis------662----------1,918


The most recent League of Minnesota Cities statistics are from 2007. Isanti in 2008 is a bit better due to our Tax Cut for this year. North Branch is slightly better but our true competition to attract businesses will be East Bethel and St Francis. Both of these communities have significantly lower city and total tax burdens and each is moving forward with providing municipal services. Isanti had the advantage of being the first City north of the metro to have full City water and sewer service but both East Bethel and St. Francis will have these available in the next 2 years. St. Francis will be slightly ahead of this schedule.

When a company looks to move north out of the high cost metro we will no longer be the first option especially with high transportation cost. I thought I would share Isanti's property tax levy. It is important to note the first year that Isanti's Rapid Residential Growth impacted a City budget was 2002. City taxes shot up dramatically.

The Levy that is set by a Council is important but not as important as how much spending takes place. If a Council consistently over spends its budget than the levy becomes meaningless. Fiscal discipline needs to be followed. Here are the numbers:

2001---45%

2002---77.17%

2003---77.75%

2004---73.85%

2005---74.21%

2006---68.41%

2007---64.66%

2008---59.91%

I am also adding City spending history. As you will see even when the levy started to decrease, spending continued to shoot through the roof. The 2008 tax cut was also followed by a spending cut.

2004----- $ 1,576,920.00
2005-----$ 2,168,170.00
2006-----$ 2,856,136.00
2007-----$ 3,430,217.00
2008-----$ 3,298,614.00

The former Mayor, CM Larson (my current opponent for the Mayor's position) and CM Johnson (a candidate for County Commissioner) all voted in favor of a 20% spending increase from 2006 to 2007. So in that election year they did lower the the tax levy slightly but exploded the budget by 20% in a year. We can not go back to that type of misgovernment.

Another note is that this years budget was created in 2007, the first year I was Mayor and reflects a significant change in approach to spending. Of course this could only happen with the support and work of Council Members Duff and Kolb who helped lower our high tax burden and end excessive spending.