1
00:00:00,458 --> 00:00:03,545
Title card: Up Next Ames City Council.

2
00:00:03,545 --> 00:00:06,631
Mayor, City Manager and Ames City Council sitting at a curved dais.

3
00:00:06,631 --> 00:00:10,719
Director of Finance Corey Goodenow and Budget Manager Nancy Masteller sit at the staff table.

4
00:00:10,719 --> 00:00:13,130
I call the special meeting of the Ames City Council

5
00:00:13,130 --> 00:00:16,130
to order for March 24th, 2026.

6
00:00:16,474 --> 00:00:20,520
And, Carly, would you just call the roll tonight?

7
00:00:20,520 --> 00:00:22,397
We had a couple people online.

8
00:00:22,397 --> 00:00:24,397
Betcher?

9
00:00:25,692 --> 00:00:27,692
Aye. Junck?

10
00:00:28,695 --> 00:00:30,905
It’s here. Here, here. I don’t know.

11
00:00:30,905 --> 00:00:32,905
Corrieri? Yeah?

12
00:00:33,867 --> 00:00:34,951
Oh. I'm here.

13
00:00:34,951 --> 00:00:36,951
Yep. Rollins?

14
00:00:37,579 --> 00:00:38,788
Here.

15
00:00:38,788 --> 00:00:41,291
Beatty-Hansen. Here. And Gartin. Here.

16
00:00:41,291 --> 00:00:42,250
Thank you.

17
00:00:42,250 --> 00:00:42,584
All right.

18
00:00:42,584 --> 00:00:43,626
We're going to add

19
00:00:43,626 --> 00:00:47,964
one item on this, agenda, as required by the Code of Iowa and,

20
00:00:47,964 --> 00:00:53,964
public hearing regarding proposed property tax levy for fiscal year 2026 2027.

21
00:00:54,120 --> 00:00:56,181
And then, Corey, you have a few things you want us to do a little bit

22
00:00:56,181 --> 00:00:59,225
a little background and then we'll open up, the public hearing.

23
00:00:59,225 --> 00:00:59,434
Yeah.

24
00:00:59,434 --> 00:01:02,771
So just a reminder, what we're doing tonight is a statutory requirement

25
00:01:02,771 --> 00:01:04,898
for a public hearing regarding the property tax levy.

26
00:01:04,898 --> 00:01:09,402
So, the Council, is required to hear public feedback.

27
00:01:09,402 --> 00:01:10,987
There can be no action taken tonight.

28
00:01:10,987 --> 00:01:14,449
So really, it's just to get feedback from the public, and,

29
00:01:14,449 --> 00:01:18,536
I guess one of the things that, occurs in anticipation of this meeting is,

30
00:01:18,536 --> 00:01:23,410
a letter that we have on the screen is sent to all Iowa property owners.

31
00:01:23,410 --> 00:01:25,376
And so we're just going to run the I think the,

32
00:01:25,376 --> 00:01:28,713
I think there's consensus that the statement is a little bit confusing.

33
00:01:28,713 --> 00:01:31,716
And so we're just going to run through, sample statement here really quick.

34
00:01:31,716 --> 00:01:32,634
And then,

35
00:01:32,634 --> 00:01:35,929
we have some of our own data and two that we hope to talk about a little bit.

36
00:01:35,929 --> 00:01:39,140
So this is, this is a similar statement that everybody should have received.

37
00:01:39,140 --> 00:01:43,269
And it's got the school district here on the top has the, county.

38
00:01:43,269 --> 00:01:47,607
And then of course, the City of Ames is the one we're here to talk about tonight.

39
00:01:47,607 --> 00:01:48,525
Excuse me.

40
00:01:48,525 --> 00:01:50,151
It has our telephone number, our website.

41
00:01:50,151 --> 00:01:51,820
And then I think the thing that we would want to

42
00:01:51,820 --> 00:01:53,571
look at tonight is the property tax piece.

43
00:01:53,571 --> 00:01:56,199
So this is the item that we're not looking to add really

44
00:01:56,199 --> 00:01:59,770
tonight, we don't have a lot of AG property in the City.

45
00:01:59,770 --> 00:02:01,371
So we're looking at the general, general non-AG.

46
00:02:01,371 --> 00:02:05,250
So last year the City collected about $37.6 million.

47
00:02:05,250 --> 00:02:09,300
And that resulted in a tax rate about $10.30.

48
00:02:09,300 --> 00:02:11,840
I think the effective tax rate is what gets people confused.

49
00:02:11,840 --> 00:02:16,400
So the effective tax rate of $9.72 is,

50
00:02:16,636 --> 00:02:19,889
the rate if the City had collected the same amount

51
00:02:19,889 --> 00:02:23,643
of property tax dollars, but there was an adjustment in the value.

52
00:02:23,643 --> 00:02:28,231
So if we collected the same 37.6 million in the upcoming fiscal year

53
00:02:28,231 --> 00:02:32,610
that we collected in the current fiscal year, that would have been the levy rate.

54
00:02:32,610 --> 00:02:36,810
But our proposed property tax collections is 39.7.

55
00:02:37,157 --> 00:02:41,357
So that results in a $10.27 levy rate.

56
00:02:42,787 --> 00:02:45,165
We'll scroll down here to the next piece.

57
00:02:45,165 --> 00:02:48,126
So this, top table here is a little bit confusing.

58
00:02:48,126 --> 00:02:54,900
So you'll notice that the, on the far right side here, the City's about 33.69%.

59
00:02:54,900 --> 00:02:59,470
In this case, you can see, the, taxing district is 01001,

60
00:02:59,470 --> 00:03:03,683
which Ames City, Ames schools, we also have Ames City Gilbert schools.

61
00:03:03,683 --> 00:03:07,270
And we have some property, I believe in the Ames City Nevada school.

62
00:03:07,270 --> 00:03:11,649
So that only applies to the Ames City, Ames School District.

63
00:03:11,649 --> 00:03:13,359
So I think the highlight of that is really

64
00:03:13,359 --> 00:03:16,290
the City's about a third of the total levy.

65
00:03:16,290 --> 00:03:18,907
And then you scroll down here, you can see,

66
00:03:18,907 --> 00:03:21,993
that this, is a calculation for properties valued

67
00:03:21,993 --> 00:03:25,872
at $100,000 who received a 10% increase in their valuation.

68
00:03:25,872 --> 00:03:30,418
So if your valuation was $100,000 and went up to $110,000,

69
00:03:30,418 --> 00:03:31,628
this would be the impact

70
00:03:31,628 --> 00:03:35,590
we we do not believe that properties went up 10% valuation.

71
00:03:35,590 --> 00:03:38,885
That's a little bit higher than we expect about, 8%.

72
00:03:38,885 --> 00:03:41,554
We'll show that on the next slide. But just want to point that out.

73
00:03:41,554 --> 00:03:43,473
So what we're looking across here down at the City.

74
00:03:43,473 --> 00:03:49,145
So if you had a $100,000 property we would have collected $489.

75
00:03:49,145 --> 00:03:50,355
In the current fiscal year.

76
00:03:50,355 --> 00:03:54,692
Under the proposed levy rate, we would collect $503

77
00:03:54,692 --> 00:03:56,692
or a 2.86% increase.

78
00:03:58,655 --> 00:03:59,300
And then it

79
00:03:59,300 --> 00:04:02,951
also goes on to do commercial industrial properties here.

80
00:04:02,951 --> 00:04:06,996
But that's again, this is a school, county, city,

81
00:04:06,996 --> 00:04:09,332
and of course, we're at a 10.64% increase.

82
00:04:09,332 --> 00:04:12,919
And that is larger because we've talked about this in the budget process.

83
00:04:12,919 --> 00:04:15,797
The levy rate or the rollback decreased.

84
00:04:15,797 --> 00:04:18,216
And we're going to talk about that in the next slide.

85
00:04:18,216 --> 00:04:21,520
So this is a familiar slide that we present to the Council

86
00:04:21,520 --> 00:04:23,120
when we're doing our budget overview session.

87
00:04:23,120 --> 00:04:25,223
Again you can see much of the information is similar.

88
00:04:25,223 --> 00:04:28,142
So $10.30 in the current fiscal year.

89
00:04:28,142 --> 00:04:31,771
The proposed rate for the upcoming fiscal year is 1027.

90
00:04:31,771 --> 00:04:34,148
We believe there was about an 8% average increase

91
00:04:34,148 --> 00:04:38,111
in valuation year over year for residential properties.

92
00:04:38,111 --> 00:04:40,446
And then the roll back adjustment you can see is the line below.

93
00:04:40,446 --> 00:04:43,908
So the rollback for residential properties is 47.43%.

94
00:04:43,908 --> 00:04:48,705
The current fiscal year in 44.53% in the upcoming fiscal year.

95
00:04:48,705 --> 00:04:52,410
So what that means is last year, this should look pretty similar.

96
00:04:52,410 --> 00:04:56,241
The City collected $488.75 and we anticipate collecting $496.41,

97
00:05:00,216 --> 00:05:03,816
an increase of about $7.66, or about 1.57%.

98
00:05:04,971 --> 00:05:08,850
And again, the difference between those two things is the change in the valuation.

99
00:05:08,850 --> 00:05:09,726
We don't, there's

100
00:05:09,726 --> 00:05:12,729
probably some properties, certainly that saw a 10% increase or higher.

101
00:05:12,729 --> 00:05:13,604
But on average

102
00:05:13,604 --> 00:05:18,943
we expected about a 10 or 8% increase in valuation for residential properties.

103
00:05:18,943 --> 00:05:20,486
Same thing for commercial, industrial.

104
00:05:20,486 --> 00:05:22,238
The same formula applies.

105
00:05:22,238 --> 00:05:23,239
It's a little bit different.

106
00:05:23,239 --> 00:05:26,340
We take the average valuation.

107
00:05:26,340 --> 00:05:30,371
So we take our total assessed value and divide it by taxable value.

108
00:05:30,371 --> 00:05:32,810
Actually that's taxable divided by assessed.

109
00:05:32,810 --> 00:05:35,376
So we come up with a different roll back adjustment

110
00:05:35,376 --> 00:05:37,860
for both industrial and commercial.

111
00:05:37,860 --> 00:05:43,343
But you can see for commercial properties we expect about a 10.54% increase.

112
00:05:43,343 --> 00:05:47,138
And we saw about a 20% increase in industrial valuation.

113
00:05:47,138 --> 00:05:50,850
So we expect about an 19.4% increase for those properties.

114
00:05:50,850 --> 00:05:54,937
So Corey, let's pause on the industrial for a second.

115
00:05:54,937 --> 00:05:57,337
So, we learned that

116
00:05:57,690 --> 00:06:01,270
there were some properties that were not,

117
00:06:01,270 --> 00:06:03,270
assessed on schedule.

118
00:06:03,404 --> 00:06:05,406
And we've corrected all that.

119
00:06:05,406 --> 00:06:08,201
And, thankfully, I thought that was going to be

120
00:06:08,201 --> 00:06:11,371
a much bigger deal than it is, but it's really a non-issue.

121
00:06:11,371 --> 00:06:14,665
But it is that sort of baked in to what

122
00:06:14,665 --> 00:06:17,919
we're seeing here in terms of that increase.

123
00:06:17,919 --> 00:06:20,588
Yeah, I think that's the so and the the column here,

124
00:06:20,588 --> 00:06:25,218
you can see with the $100,000 property to $119,000 property,

125
00:06:25,218 --> 00:06:29,514
that's really that big valuation increase for, for industrial property.

126
00:06:29,514 --> 00:06:31,808
So that is included in our calculation okay.

127
00:06:31,808 --> 00:06:34,352
That's all I need. Thanks.

128
00:06:34,352 --> 00:06:36,604
That's a good point to bring up because you asked

129
00:06:36,604 --> 00:06:40,733
that of the City Assessor and one of our in the Board of Review, or not

130
00:06:40,733 --> 00:06:44,278
Board of Review, the Conference Board meeting.

131
00:06:44,278 --> 00:06:45,363
And she made it very clear

132
00:06:45,363 --> 00:06:48,491
that some properties hadn't been visited for over ten years.

133
00:06:48,491 --> 00:06:49,784
Industrial properties.

134
00:06:49,784 --> 00:06:53,955
That is, so they're catching up and they should have been, but they weren't.

135
00:06:53,955 --> 00:06:56,791
And she was not Assessor when those were overlooked essentially.

136
00:06:56,791 --> 00:06:58,791
So anyway, so

137
00:06:59,961 --> 00:07:03,256
so a person who's either watching or here,

138
00:07:03,256 --> 00:07:06,592
how, let's just say they had a house that was

139
00:07:06,592 --> 00:07:10,221
they got a notice and it was assessed at 250.

140
00:07:10,221 --> 00:07:14,642
What number would they, would they use the 108 divide

141
00:07:14,642 --> 00:07:18,187
or 100 to figure out what their increase is going to be?

142
00:07:18,187 --> 00:07:18,604
Sure.

143
00:07:18,604 --> 00:07:22,400
So in that case, you would just multiply the 100% valuations

144
00:07:22,400 --> 00:07:25,445
by two and a half and that would carry all the way through.

145
00:07:25,445 --> 00:07:29,824
So two and a half times $7. Two and a half times 100,000, yeah.

146
00:07:29,824 --> 00:07:32,824
times $7.65 would be the increase.

147
00:07:33,744 --> 00:07:34,579
Is that correct?

148
00:07:34,579 --> 00:07:37,248
For interested parties we have a calculator don't we? Yeah.

149
00:07:37,248 --> 00:07:39,625
And that was our next question. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

150
00:07:39,625 --> 00:07:40,334
Go ahead.

151
00:07:40,334 --> 00:07:42,211
All right I was going to say that would

152
00:07:42,211 --> 00:07:45,131
that's where I would steer someone if they were curious about that.

153
00:07:45,131 --> 00:07:47,633
Sure. We can just we do have a calculator on the website.

154
00:07:47,633 --> 00:07:49,427
We did it for the,

155
00:07:49,427 --> 00:07:53,140
whoops, the first time last year.

156
00:07:53,140 --> 00:07:55,266
Where can they what can work? Can they find it too.

157
00:07:55,266 --> 00:07:56,309
So you can share. Yep.

158
00:07:56,309 --> 00:07:58,978
So if you go to City of Ames, our website,

159
00:07:58,978 --> 00:08:00,188
City of Ames wesbite.

160
00:08:00,188 --> 00:08:02,815
and you go to the Finance web page under the Department

161
00:08:02,815 --> 00:08:04,609
section under My Government.

162
00:08:04,609 --> 00:08:07,280
So this is CityofAmes.org. Yep.

163
00:08:07,280 --> 00:08:10,281
And you go to the Finance Department here

164
00:08:10,281 --> 00:08:14,760
and you scroll down off to the right.

165
00:08:14,760 --> 00:08:16,120
We have a section called Property Tax

166
00:08:16,120 --> 00:08:19,165
where we're talking about our property tax for the upcoming fiscal year.

167
00:08:19,165 --> 00:08:20,333
We have something to talk about.

168
00:08:20,333 --> 00:08:24,545
Look out for the letter talks about the valuation increase.

169
00:08:24,545 --> 00:08:27,423
And then we have, City of Ames residential property

170
00:08:27,423 --> 00:08:31,385
tax calculator, where you can enter in your individual valuation.

171
00:08:31,385 --> 00:08:35,431
So it'll be important to enter in your 24 assessment and your 25 assessment

172
00:08:35,431 --> 00:08:39,602
that can be found on the county's beacon website.

173
00:08:39,602 --> 00:08:41,646
And that should come out with exactly what you're,

174
00:08:41,646 --> 00:08:43,564
and remember, this is just the City property taxes.

175
00:08:43,564 --> 00:08:46,670
So we're not talking about school or county or anything else.

176
00:08:46,670 --> 00:08:48,736
This is just the City portion of your property tax bill.

177
00:08:48,736 --> 00:08:50,655
And what else does that show down there. Yeah.

178
00:08:50,655 --> 00:08:54,158
So it shows how we how we spend those property tax dollars in the upcoming

179
00:08:54,158 --> 00:08:54,617
fiscal year.

180
00:08:54,617 --> 00:08:57,780
So we break them down by several different categories.

181
00:08:57,780 --> 00:08:58,204
Public Safety,

182
00:08:58,204 --> 00:09:02,830
Utilities, Transportation, Parks and Rec all the way down to General Governmental.

183
00:09:02,830 --> 00:09:04,293
And then it of course gives you kind of a property tax.

184
00:09:04,293 --> 00:09:05,503
We call that a receipt.

185
00:09:05,503 --> 00:09:09,340
So that's what you're getting for your property tax dollars.

186
00:09:09,340 --> 00:09:11,340
Any other question?

187
00:09:13,261 --> 00:09:14,178
Rachel or Anita.

188
00:09:14,178 --> 00:09:16,178
Any questions.

189
00:09:18,516 --> 00:09:20,516
No thank you.

190
00:09:22,190 --> 00:09:23,187
Okay.

191
00:09:23,187 --> 00:09:23,479
All right.

192
00:09:23,479 --> 00:09:26,941
I declare the public hearing on the

193
00:09:26,941 --> 00:09:29,986
proposed property tax levy for fiscal year

194
00:09:29,986 --> 00:09:32,986
July 1st, 2026 to June 30th, 2027.

195
00:09:33,114 --> 00:09:37,118
To be open, anyone who wants to address Council is welcome to come up

196
00:09:37,118 --> 00:09:42,290
to the podium, introduce themselves and then offer comments.

197
00:09:42,290 --> 00:09:44,290
Or questions.

198
00:09:48,400 --> 00:09:48,546
All right.

199
00:09:48,546 --> 00:09:50,131
Seeing and hearing none.

200
00:09:50,131 --> 00:09:53,884
We'll declare the public hearing to be closed.

201
00:09:53,884 --> 00:09:55,928
What's the next steps that's going to happen?

202
00:09:55,928 --> 00:09:58,806
Yep. So tonight, as part of the consent

203
00:09:58,806 --> 00:10:02,180
agenda, will set the public hearing for, I believe, April 14th.

204
00:10:02,180 --> 00:10:03,227
So the second public hearing.

205
00:10:03,227 --> 00:10:04,729
Second public hearing. Yep.

206
00:10:04,729 --> 00:10:06,397
On the overall budget.

207
00:10:06,397 --> 00:10:07,440
And once that's approved,

208
00:10:07,440 --> 00:10:11,527
we submit that to the county who ultimately submits to the state for approval.

209
00:10:11,527 --> 00:10:13,927
All right. Very good.

210
00:10:14,363 --> 00:10:15,573
Thank you.

211
00:10:15,573 --> 00:10:19,452
Entertain a motion to adjourn. Move we adjourn. Second.

212
00:10:19,452 --> 00:10:22,452
Thank you. We are adjourned.

213
00:10:28,440 --> 00:10:30,444
City Council meeting credits.