City council holds debt levy flat for another year, general levy to increase five percent

Photo by Tucker Henderson
Work is underway at the new cold storage building near the City Center building in New York Mills. The facility will replace the former T19 cold storage building near the library, which was sold earlier this year.

By Chad Koenen

Publisher

The New York Mills City Council approved a slight increase in its 2025 preliminary tax levy. 

During its regularly scheduled meeting last week, the NY Mills City Council approved a five percent preliminary tax levy increase in its general fund and no increase in its debt levy. The end result is a 3.7 percent blended proposed tax increase next year. 

City Clerk Julie Roberts said the preliminary tax levy increase can be lowered, but not increased once it is formally certified by the city council. She said a number of budget meetings have been held recently with department heads as they developed their 2025 budget. 

“We are proposing to keep the debt portion of our levy flat, which that is $169,000. We are not planning to increase that in 2025. Out of the general fund levy we are proposing a 5 percent increase,” said Roberts. “When you take the two of them together the overall increase comes to a 3.7 percent increase in peoples taxes. That amount can go down, but it cannot go up once we certify it to the county.”

The city council commended the city staff for keeping the proposed tax levy increase as low as possible, yet not decreasing services within the city limits. The total tax levy for next year is being proposed at $651,338, of which $482,338 is in the general fund. Roberts said the city’s debt levy, which is set at $169,000, has been that amount for a number of years. 

The city’s truth in taxation meeting will be held on Tuesday, Dec. 10 at 6:01 p.m.

In other news

• Heard the annual pool report from manager Harley Wurst who stated the pool opened about a week later than usual due to work that was done at the pool and a delay in getting a state inspected completed. As a result, the number of swimmers were down a bit in June, but the annual free swim as part of Lund Mania featured 174 swimmers in July, compared to 112 last year. The number of swimmers also grew significantly in July to 2,086 this year. Cool weather kept the number of swimmers down a bit in August as well. A popular addition this year was water aerobics which was added to the month of July.

• Heard the monthly liquor store report from Mills Liquors which showed combined gross sales were down four percent from the same month in 2023 and net revenues are down 3.55 percent as a percentage of sales from the previous year. Total year to date net revenue is down 4.94 percent as a percentage of sales from last year.

• Heard the monthly fire department report, which showed 16 calls for service in August, a total of 13 of which were medical calls. The old engine was recently sold on auction for $4,000 with proceeds being put towards the shortfall of the new engine. The council also heard the fire department was awarded a $2,500 grant through the Minnesota DNR, which is a 50/50 match towards water supply, wild land fire equipment, radios and turn out gear.

• Heard the monthly police report which showed 141 calls for service with the department issuing two citations and giving 30 warnings. 

• Heard the monthly utility department report from public works director Kyle Mattson who stated the department has completed a number of projects of late, including street patching, work at the pool and preparing for the material storage building project at the City Center. 

• Heard from city clerk Julie Roberts about the need to find a new location for the blue county recycle bins now that the former T19 storage building has been sold. Roberts said there are several ideas of places to locate the bins, but they are still located at the T19 building as the city weighs where to locate the bins next. 

• Approved a recommendation from the library board to appoint Wendy Hetland to the library board. Hetland will fill a vacant spot on the library board. Latham Hetland abstained from the vote. 

• Approved a $1,500 donation from West Central Initiative Annual Fund. 

• Held public hearings for Ordinance 701 concerning animals in the city limits (keeping chickens in the city limits), Ordinance 1001 for health and safety/nuisance ordinances (barbed wire fencing) and Ordinance 702 concerning mobile food units and food trucks.