We all know and appreciate that Blackfoot is a great place to live and raise families. I think that the common denominator among all our citizens is that they want a safe, clean, fun, and efficient city.
Keeping our city safe requires a well-qualified and appropriately staffed police and fire department. Keeping our city clean requires efficient sanitation and sewer departments. City parks, ball fields, golf course, airport, and library provide areas for recreation and learning. Water is essential for everything.
We need our administrative services to support all these departments and their employees. We are tasked with funding these services without compromising them too much. We then create budgets to facilitate the services. Countless hours go into the budgeting process as we mark up and revise until we finally get a finished product.
The city does not live in a vacuum, we are subject to the same inflationary factors that affect everyone. Costs of fuel, materials, fertilizer, and equipment have gone up significantly. In order to keep and attract qualified employees it is necessary to provide competitive wages. All the city’s employees, including the mayor and council, are fully aware that we need to trim the budget as much as possible, but we also must consider a way forward to provide for healthy growth.
This year’s assessment figures on property have been quite a shock to all of us. It is important to remember that it is the county assessor’s office who creates the assessments, not the city. According to Idaho Code the assessor must assess properties at 90-110% of the market value, and that comes from the state legislators. Cities seem to get the most complaints about increasing property tax, but it needs to be shared with the county and state.
Blackfoot’s budget for 2023 is $27,160,916. Of that amount, $5,497,168 is property tax revenue. The levy rate of approximately .0072 is lower than it has been for several years. Between the increased property tax exemption and the decreased levy amount, some people may find that their tax bill has gone down.
Recently, we had a public hearing on the budget. It is always important to hear from our citizens, and we welcome constructive criticism. One complaint voiced at the council meeting was that we make decisions behind closed doors. This never happens as we are bound by open meeting laws that dictate that decisions are made in a public meeting. We also heard that we hire too many people. We have had to backfill positions this year due to several employees retiring, but we have only added one full-time employee.
While inflation is 9.2%, we raised the budget by only 3%, which raised the total taxes citywide approximately $161,000. Taking all of this into account you can be assured that we are working hard for you and are good stewards of your money. I am honored to be your councilwoman, please contact me at anytime with questions you may have.
