Title
Consideration of reassigning a portion of the debt levy to the General Fund operating levy
Body
Issue/Request:
Consideration of reassigning a portion of the debt levy to the General Fund operating levy
Key Issues:
Over many years, the City of Lee's Summit has benefited from strong financial management and wise long-term planning. The City's residents have shown a steadfast support of City government through positive outcomes with ballot issues that have been placed before them. The August 2019 approval of the Use Tax is a recent example. As the City has grown and the cost of operations has grown, there is an increasing imbalance between the funding needed for general operating expenses and the funding needed for infrastructure development. With each new structure built with capital funding, there is a corresponding need for long-term operational support.
Also, the City has seen a decrease in revenues associated with certain franchise taxes. In addition, the City anticipates continued expenditure demands to meet the needs of attracting and retaining qualified personnel through our compensation structure. With the growth of the city we have seen service demand levels that will also require the support of additional employees throughout the organization. An overview of these current and future concerns have been provided in the attached document.
The City is now at a tipping point where it is ideal to ask our voters to approve a no-tax-increase redistribution of our annual property tax levy. Our annual levy is comprised of three components with the recently approved rates set at $0.8384 for General Fund Operations, $0.1482 for Parks Operations, and $0.4697 for General Obligation Debt Service, totaling $1.4563 per $100 assessed valuation. At current levels of assessment valuations, for each $0.01 shift of property tax levy from the debt service component to the general operating component, the change would shift approximately $230,000 from de...
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