Commissioners reject change to their property tax policy

Sedgwick County commissioners Wednesday decided to keep their goal of having flat property taxes for the next five years and then cutting taxes in the sixth year.

Last year’s commission voted to set a target mill levy rate of 29.359 mills. Their goal was to keep it the same from 2017 to 2022, then have it drop to 28.758 mills in 2023.

The mill levy rate helps determine how much property tax revenue Sedgwick County residents pay.

A proposal on Wednesday would have kept the target mill levy rate at 29.359 mills. But language about the 2023 decrease would have been dropped.

“The resolution … would remove that reduction,” said County Chief Financial Officer Lindsay Poe Rousseau.

It was defeated by a unanimous 5-0 vote.

Commissioner Michael O’Donnell said it’s a good thing “anytime we can lower property taxes.”

“2023 is many years off, and I think that we can allow future commissions to decide what they want to do with this,” O’Donnell said. “(But) since there was such strong support for that last year, I think that we should keep the reduction in the mill levy.”

Commissioners Jim Howell and Richard Ranzau said the county needs to guard against incremental increases in the mill levy during the property valuation process.

“Without having a target, what happens is it inches up over time,” Howell said.

County commissioners deferred a discussion about how much of the county budget can be spent on paying back debt.

The county has a target debt ceiling of 9 percent, meaning it can’t spend more than 9 percent of its budget on paying back debt.

A proposal on Wednesday would have raised that to 10 percent. O’Donnell asked to table the resolution until April to do more research.

Last year, the previous commission majority lowered the ceiling from its previous rate of 20 percent. The 9 percent ceiling is scheduled to be lowered to 8 percent in 2019.

This story was originally published March 22, 2017 at 5:02 PM with the headline "Commissioners reject change to their property tax policy."