Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
By CHARITY SMITH
Bessemer — The Bessemer City Council is considering implementing a special assessment tax to cover police and fire services. If passed, the tax would allow the city to generate additional revenue by freeing up funding from the general fund.
According to councilman Terry Kryshak, the city pays $100,000 to Gogebic County Sheriff’s Office and between $17,000 and $25,000 per year for the fire department.
“This is something we didn’t know could be done, we haven’t done this in the past, but it got brought to our attention that this could be done,” said Mayor Adam Zak. “We’re just exploring it as an option in order to raise revenue.”
The council has two options in order to impose the tax, which does not require a public vote. They can either impose a flat fee for all residences in the tax or they can implement a millage. The millage would make it so that the tax rate is based on the value of the property.
“To get some of these ideas, we just assumed we had 1,069 units between houses and commercial facilities,” city manager Charly Loper said. “This assumes that apartments are all one unit though, some of the apartments might have nine units in it and we just treat it as one.”
Loper said they are also assuming that each mil would bring in $30,100. If the council chose the millage option at 50% it would equate to 2.08 mils. However, the council is leaning towards imposing a 50% flat fee for each household, which according to Zak, would free up about $60,000 from the general fund. At a 50% flat rate, each home or property would be assessed a $58.54 fee starting with the 2022 winter taxes.
“Everybody uses law enforcement and fire protection the same, no matter if you have an apartment or a house. No matter if you have a small house or a big house that really doesn’t have bearing on that,” said Zak. “I would think that the fairest way to go is the straight up flat rate.”
Kryshak pointed out that apartments make the flat rate more complicated, because how should they go about imposing the tax on apartments is a question — should it be charged to each individual unit or to each building.
“I think it would be fair to assess the apartments more than you would a house,” said Coleman. “First of all, the apartment owner is getting revenue from that building and as part of that building there’s costs involved.”
The council requested at the Oct. 4 meeting that Loper see how other municipalities have handled imposing the special assessment tax on apartments. On Monday, Loper said that she had reached out to other city managers, but had not heard back on the issue.
“I definitely don’t think it’s something to be taken lightly,” said Zak. “If we can’t get a clarification from other people who have done it, we may want to have a group session on it.”
Loper said there seems to be, according to the Michigan Municipal League (MML), a lot of communities that are assessing the tax. The council suggested asking for a list of those communities and contacting them directly.
“We can’t update and correct things and make things better and attract new things if we don’t invest money, and we can only invest money if we have money,” said Zak. “The only way to get money is to raise the money we take in our revenue. The most common way to do it is to raise something that everyone has to pay. ... Nobody wants to do it. I don’t want to do it, but it’s kind of a necessary evil, unfortunately.”
The council tabled the issue to allow Loper to find more information.
The council also:
—Approved a mayoral proclamation for International Alpha Delta Kappa Month.
—Accepted the resignation of Donna Brown from the library board and posted her position.
