Pella approves and adopts budget

PELLA – The City of Pella has adopted its budget for the new fiscal year, which will have a 55-cent increase in property taxes starting July 1.

On Tuesday evening, the city council unanimously approved the budget. For the last 22 years, the property tax rate in Pella has been kept at $10.20 per $1,000 of estimated value. However, this has been increased to $10.75.

According to City Administrator Mike Nardini, there were three primary reasons for the increase. The first of these involved the city taking over Pella Community Ambulance services and the costs that it incurred. The city will be conducting an operational assessment of the community ambulance in the future. Community Ambulance has also requested two additional paramedics.

"Once we have the results of the assessment on this, we're planning to revisit that request with the Pella City Council, as well," Nardini said. 

Subsidies for the ambulance in the budget come out to just shy of $600,000. Property insurance has also gone up.

“When you look at property insurance – it’s happening across the State of Iowa for the general fund, we have about a $200,000 increase,” Nardini said.

A lower rate of revenue funding at the state level has also been a contributing factor to the increase.

“And then the third item – this has been a trend for several years – is we’re experiencing a decreased general fund revenue due to reduced state funding from the State of Iowa,” Nardini said. “And this deals with property tax legislation curve in 2013-14, and the state backfill on that has been decreasing for cities. So if you take accommodation of all three of these items, that is why we’re proposing to increase property taxes."

The new budget will include an overall allotment of nearly $69.5 million for planned expenditures.

“This budget is very heavy on infrastructure… but when we look at it overall, we have a budget surplus of just under $292,000,” Nardini said. “I’d like to remind the counsel that when you take a look at the city’s budget, this includes the general fund operations, as well as all utility operations. And most of the items we tend to deal with in City Council are general fund issues – that’s what people associate with the general government in the City of Pella.

“That budget that’s included in here is about an $11.5 million budget – and it has roughly a $22,000 surplus,” he explained.

Nardini stated that city employees can expect a 2% increase in their pay starting next fiscal year. 

Despite the increase, Nardini said that Pella still has one of the lower property tax rates in the state.