[0:00] Title card: Up Next Ames City Council.
[0:03] Mayor, City Manager and Ames City Council sitting at a curved dais.
[0:06] Director of Finance Corey Goodenow and Budget Manager Nancy Masteller sit at the staff table.
[0:10] I call the special meeting of the Ames City Council
[0:13] to order for March 24th, 2026.
[0:16] And, Carly, would you just call the roll tonight?
[0:20] We had a couple people online.
[0:22] Betcher?
[0:25] Aye. Junck?
[0:28] It’s here. Here, here. I don’t know.
[0:30] Corrieri? Yeah?
[0:33] Oh. I'm here.
[0:34] Yep. Rollins?
[0:37] Here.
[0:38] Beatty-Hansen. Here. And Gartin. Here.
[0:41] Thank you.
[0:42] All right.
[0:42] We're going to add
[0:43] one item on this, agenda, as required by the Code of Iowa and,
[0:47] public hearing regarding proposed property tax levy for fiscal year 2026 2027.
[0:54] And then, Corey, you have a few things you want us to do a little bit
[0:56] a little background and then we'll open up, the public hearing.
[0:59] Yeah.
[0:59] So just a reminder, what we're doing tonight is a statutory requirement
[1:02] for a public hearing regarding the property tax levy.
[1:04] So, the Council, is required to hear public feedback.
[1:09] There can be no action taken tonight.
[1:10] So really, it's just to get feedback from the public, and,
[1:14] I guess one of the things that, occurs in anticipation of this meeting is,
[1:18] a letter that we have on the screen is sent to all Iowa property owners.
[1:23] And so we're just going to run the I think the,
[1:25] I think there's consensus that the statement is a little bit confusing.
[1:28] And so we're just going to run through, sample statement here really quick.
[1:31] And then,
[1:32] we have some of our own data and two that we hope to talk about a little bit.
[1:35] So this is, this is a similar statement that everybody should have received.
[1:39] And it's got the school district here on the top has the, county.
[1:43] And then of course, the City of Ames is the one we're here to talk about tonight.
[1:47] Excuse me.
[1:48] It has our telephone number, our website.
[1:50] And then I think the thing that we would want to
[1:51] look at tonight is the property tax piece.
[1:53] So this is the item that we're not looking to add really
[1:56] tonight, we don't have a lot of AG property in the City.
[1:59] So we're looking at the general, general non-AG.
[2:01] So last year the City collected about $37.6 million.
[2:05] And that resulted in a tax rate about $10.30.
[2:09] I think the effective tax rate is what gets people confused.
[2:11] So the effective tax rate of $9.72 is,
[2:16] the rate if the City had collected the same amount
[2:19] of property tax dollars, but there was an adjustment in the value.
[2:23] So if we collected the same 37.6 million in the upcoming fiscal year
[2:28] that we collected in the current fiscal year, that would have been the levy rate.
[2:32] But our proposed property tax collections is 39.7.
[2:37] So that results in a $10.27 levy rate.
[2:42] We'll scroll down here to the next piece.
[2:45] So this, top table here is a little bit confusing.
[2:48] So you'll notice that the, on the far right side here, the City's about 33.69%.
[2:54] In this case, you can see, the, taxing district is 01001,
[2:59] which Ames City, Ames schools, we also have Ames City Gilbert schools.
[3:03] And we have some property, I believe in the Ames City Nevada school.
[3:07] So that only applies to the Ames City, Ames School District.
[3:11] So I think the highlight of that is really
[3:13] the City's about a third of the total levy.
[3:16] And then you scroll down here, you can see,
[3:18] that this, is a calculation for properties valued
[3:21] at $100,000 who received a 10% increase in their valuation.
[3:25] So if your valuation was $100,000 and went up to $110,000,
[3:30] this would be the impact
[3:31] we we do not believe that properties went up 10% valuation.
[3:35] That's a little bit higher than we expect about, 8%.
[3:38] We'll show that on the next slide. But just want to point that out.
[3:41] So what we're looking across here down at the City.
[3:43] So if you had a $100,000 property we would have collected $489.
[3:49] In the current fiscal year.
[3:50] Under the proposed levy rate, we would collect $503
[3:54] or a 2.86% increase.
[3:58] And then it
[3:59] also goes on to do commercial industrial properties here.
[4:02] But that's again, this is a school, county, city,
[4:06] and of course, we're at a 10.64% increase.
[4:09] And that is larger because we've talked about this in the budget process.
[4:12] The levy rate or the rollback decreased.
[4:15] And we're going to talk about that in the next slide.
[4:18] So this is a familiar slide that we present to the Council
[4:21] when we're doing our budget overview session.
[4:23] Again you can see much of the information is similar.
[4:25] So $10.30 in the current fiscal year.
[4:28] The proposed rate for the upcoming fiscal year is 1027.
[4:31] We believe there was about an 8% average increase
[4:34] in valuation year over year for residential properties.
[4:38] And then the roll back adjustment you can see is the line below.
[4:40] So the rollback for residential properties is 47.43%.
[4:43] The current fiscal year in 44.53% in the upcoming fiscal year.
[4:48] So what that means is last year, this should look pretty similar.
[4:52] The City collected $488.75 and we anticipate collecting $496.41,
[5:00] an increase of about $7.66, or about 1.57%.
[5:04] And again, the difference between those two things is the change in the valuation.
[5:08] We don't, there's
[5:09] probably some properties, certainly that saw a 10% increase or higher.
[5:12] But on average
[5:13] we expected about a 10 or 8% increase in valuation for residential properties.
[5:18] Same thing for commercial, industrial.
[5:20] The same formula applies.
[5:22] It's a little bit different.
[5:23] We take the average valuation.
[5:26] So we take our total assessed value and divide it by taxable value.
[5:30] Actually that's taxable divided by assessed.
[5:32] So we come up with a different roll back adjustment
[5:35] for both industrial and commercial.
[5:37] But you can see for commercial properties we expect about a 10.54% increase.
[5:43] And we saw about a 20% increase in industrial valuation.
[5:47] So we expect about an 19.4% increase for those properties.
[5:50] So Corey, let's pause on the industrial for a second.
[5:54] So, we learned that
[5:57] there were some properties that were not,
[6:01] assessed on schedule.
[6:03] And we've corrected all that.
[6:05] And, thankfully, I thought that was going to be
[6:08] a much bigger deal than it is, but it's really a non-issue.
[6:11] But it is that sort of baked in to what
[6:14] we're seeing here in terms of that increase.
[6:17] Yeah, I think that's the so and the the column here,
[6:20] you can see with the $100,000 property to $119,000 property,
[6:25] that's really that big valuation increase for, for industrial property.
[6:29] So that is included in our calculation okay.
[6:31] That's all I need. Thanks.
[6:34] That's a good point to bring up because you asked
[6:36] that of the City Assessor and one of our in the Board of Review, or not
[6:40] Board of Review, the Conference Board meeting.
[6:44] And she made it very clear
[6:45] that some properties hadn't been visited for over ten years.
[6:48] Industrial properties.
[6:49] That is, so they're catching up and they should have been, but they weren't.
[6:53] And she was not Assessor when those were overlooked essentially.
[6:56] So anyway, so
[6:59] so a person who's either watching or here,
[7:03] how, let's just say they had a house that was
[7:06] they got a notice and it was assessed at 250.
[7:10] What number would they, would they use the 108 divide
[7:14] or 100 to figure out what their increase is going to be?
[7:18] Sure.
[7:18] So in that case, you would just multiply the 100% valuations
[7:22] by two and a half and that would carry all the way through.
[7:25] So two and a half times $7. Two and a half times 100,000, yeah.
[7:29] times $7.65 would be the increase.
[7:33] Is that correct?
[7:34] For interested parties we have a calculator don't we? Yeah.
[7:37] And that was our next question. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.
[7:39] Go ahead.
[7:40] All right I was going to say that would
[7:42] that's where I would steer someone if they were curious about that.
[7:45] Sure. We can just we do have a calculator on the website.
[7:47] We did it for the,
[7:49] whoops, the first time last year.
[7:53] Where can they what can work? Can they find it too.
[7:55] So you can share. Yep.
[7:56] So if you go to City of Ames, our website,
[7:58] City of Ames wesbite.
[8:00] and you go to the Finance web page under the Department
[8:02] section under My Government.
[8:04] So this is CityofAmes.org. Yep.
[8:07] And you go to the Finance Department here
[8:10] and you scroll down off to the right.
[8:14] We have a section called Property Tax
[8:16] where we're talking about our property tax for the upcoming fiscal year.
[8:19] We have something to talk about.
[8:20] Look out for the letter talks about the valuation increase.
[8:24] And then we have, City of Ames residential property
[8:27] tax calculator, where you can enter in your individual valuation.
[8:31] So it'll be important to enter in your 24 assessment and your 25 assessment
[8:35] that can be found on the county's beacon website.
[8:39] And that should come out with exactly what you're,
[8:41] and remember, this is just the City property taxes.
[8:43] So we're not talking about school or county or anything else.
[8:46] This is just the City portion of your property tax bill.
[8:48] And what else does that show down there. Yeah.
[8:50] So it shows how we how we spend those property tax dollars in the upcoming
[8:54] fiscal year.
[8:54] So we break them down by several different categories.
[8:57] Public Safety,
[8:58] Utilities, Transportation, Parks and Rec all the way down to General Governmental.
[9:02] And then it of course gives you kind of a property tax.
[9:04] We call that a receipt.
[9:05] So that's what you're getting for your property tax dollars.
[9:09] Any other question?
[9:13] Rachel or Anita.
[9:14] Any questions.
[9:18] No thank you.
[9:22] Okay.
[9:23] All right.
[9:23] I declare the public hearing on the
[9:26] proposed property tax levy for fiscal year
[9:29] July 1st, 2026 to June 30th, 2027.
[9:33] To be open, anyone who wants to address Council is welcome to come up
[9:37] to the podium, introduce themselves and then offer comments.
[9:42] Or questions.
[9:48] All right.
[9:48] Seeing and hearing none.
[9:50] We'll declare the public hearing to be closed.
[9:53] What's the next steps that's going to happen?
[9:55] Yep. So tonight, as part of the consent
[9:58] agenda, will set the public hearing for, I believe, April 14th.
[10:02] So the second public hearing.
[10:03] Second public hearing. Yep.
[10:04] On the overall budget.
[10:06] And once that's approved,
[10:07] we submit that to the county who ultimately submits to the state for approval.
[10:11] All right. Very good.
[10:14] Thank you.
[10:15] Entertain a motion to adjourn. Move we adjourn. Second.
[10:19] Thank you. We are adjourned.
[10:28] City Council meeting credits.