Commentary: Tax Rate of 5% now approved but method in question
Maple Lake councilors further discussed our city tax rate reduction prior to last week’s Messenger coverage, from their high 19% request to the county in September’s initial preliminary proposal, with three options to choose from, as proposed by our City Administrator: Option 1 @12%, Option 2 @11%, and Option 3 @ 11%. Not happy with any of that, we all opted for 9% two meetings ago. My request to push for 7% by last meeting was based on a counselor stating 5% was a “pipe dream and unrealistic,” even though that was what we had been pushing for when this all started. As I recall, we were told 7% would only leave $300 in our reserves but our city attorney denies that, stating that such a thin edge would not be allowed under state law. At out last meeting, it turns out we’ll still have around a million dollars in reserve, even after finally doing the 5% that had been promised to our residents.
So, here’s the thing. The alternative to robbing our reserves is to cut expenses. We spent nearly triple what Annandale did for legal representation and fees in 2022 and are on track to do the same for 2023. Annandale’s City Attorney is basically retained on an as needed basis and doesn’t attend a meeting a month like ours does, costing our tax payers $178/hr. ($8/hr. raise from last year), totaling well over $500 each time he joins our group. In addition to milage and travel time from the cities or St. Cloud, he gets paid for fights he takes to court on the city’s behalf, where there appears to be no limit in what he can charge back to city taxpayers or attempt to take from city taxpayer defendants, a scary wild card in this game of who pays.
I’m told we shouldn’t compare with Annandale, that our City Administrator “…has better things to do” than to see why Annandale’s yearly legal bill in 2022 was $22,489.50 compared with Maple Lakes’s at $90,294.32. Already this year, Annandale is at $18,237, yet Maple Lake is at a whopping $83,847.42. It seems the County Attorney doesn’t want to fight our city battles in court either and regretfully says so. Former Mayor Todd Borrell was advised by a judge in a letter which they now seem unable to find, that the city CANNOT run up legal fees and get those fees reimbursed by defendants. That means, our tax payers most likely will shoulder such burdens yet we give our city attorney a blank check to run up excessive bills with no apparent ceiling, to for example enforce ordinances needing major review and focus. Our City Attorney says there can be no ordinance review and reform until the city’s case against me is resolved. If people aren’t being harmed, why do we have highly subjective ordinances stating you cannot temporarily store some of your possessions in your car, unused vehicles must be stored inside a building, you can’t burn your leaves or grass like the state allows you to do, you can have no more than two licensed and operable vehicles per licensed driver in a driveway that may allow more many more, etc. etc.
Let’s review and see where taxpayer relief can dip even below 5%, going beyond the only offered solution of dipping into our reserves. Perhaps we need to audit what we spend in legal fees and compare our needs to Annandale’s needs, to see where our massive overrun seems to go. Engineering fees should be looked into also…and what about consultant fees. Is it time to go back to having our own police force, considering the recent massive costs incurred with county policing? That’s an argument for another day but the current, dip into our reserves vs. cut costs argument, legal costs in particular, seems to be extremely important one, right now.
John Haack
Maple Lake City Council