Here is Jay Kolls’ story relating to my blog post yesterday:

Public Welcome at Hearing this coming Tuesday

The County Board will hold its annual Truth in Taxation hearing on the proposed 2012 budget and property tax levy at 6 p.m., Tuesday, Nov. 29, at the Hennepin County Government Center.

The Board is scheduled to vote on the proposed budget at our regularly scheduled board meeting on December 12.  That budget contains a small decrease in actual spending (as was the case each of the past two years) and no increase in the property tax levy amount.

Despite this, many county taxpayers noted that the property tax notices they received last week indicated property tax increases for Hennepin County and other local taxing authorities.  For example, the taxable market value for my home dropped just under 1%, but my property taxes are estimated to increase 6.8%.  Specifically, my county tax will increase 7%, the City of Plymouth portion will increase 5.9%, the Wayzata School District amount will increase 7%, the Met Council tax will increase 6% and “other special taxing districts”  will increase 8.6%.

I am hearing about similar increases from many of my constituents.

There are several reasons one’s county property tax amount can increase even if the actual total tax amount collected by the county remains the same.  If, for example, my valuation drops less than the average valuation drops, I will likely see a tax increase while some of my neighbors whose valuation dropped at a greater rate might see a smaller increase or a decrease in taxes.  The state legislature and the Governor can also agree to changes in state law that might lead to a property tax increase for some, as we are likely to see next year when some owners of higher-valued homes and commercial real estate pay extra to make up for changes to the market value homestead credit to benefit owners of some lower-valued homes.

Regardless of the reasons or whose “fault” it is, however, many property owners in Hennepin County are likely to see property tax increases based on the proposed budget that will be discussed at the Truth in Taxation hearing this week.  My intent again this year is to offer an amendment to our budget to cut the property tax levy by an amount that would hold the “average” homeowner in Hennepin County harmless from a county tax increase.  While we have not determined the exact amount of that cut yet, it is likely somewhere between a 2% and 3% levy reduction.

The hearing will be held in the County Board Room on the 24th Floor of the Hennepin County Government Center, 300 S. Sixth St., Minneapolis.

Free parking is provided for residents testifying at this hearing who park in the Government Center’s underground ramp after 4:30 p.m. The ramp entrance is on 3rd Avenue between 5th and 6th streets.

Overall, not a bad day for HC taxpayers – but there’s still work to do…

Last week, the County Board set our “maximum levy” amounts for 2012.  State law requires every local government unit to set the maximum amount it will levy for the upcoming year in early September.  Once the maximum levy amount is set, the local government can still choose to levy less when it sets its final budget (usually in December), but it cannot choose to levy more.

Hennepin County has three separate levies – the general levy, the railroad authority levy and the housing authority levy.  In 2011, the general levy was set at just under $650 million.  The railroad levy was $18 million.  The housing levy was just over $5.6 million.

Last week, the Board voted 5 – 1 (Gail Dorfman was absent and I voted no) to set the maximum general levy at an amount representing a 1% increase.  I moved to set the max at the same level as last year, but was voted down 2 – 4 (with Randy Johnson joining me in voting “yes”).  Keep in mind that the 1% increase (approximately an extra $6.5 million in tax revenue) is the maximum and the Board could decide to hold the levy flat – or even cut it – when we set our final budget.

The original proposal from the County Administrator was to set the maximum 2012 railroad levy at $21 million – just over a 17% increase from 2011.  Commissioner Jan Callison successfully moved to cut that increase in half.  I then moved to hold the maximum levy at $18 million (a 0% increase).  That motion also passed on a vote of 4 – 2 (with Randy Johnson, Mike Opat and Mark Stenglein joining me).

The Board unanimously set the maximum housing levy at a 0% increase as proposed by the county administrator.

My goal in our final budget discussions will be to cut the levies by an amount that would hold the “average” Hennepin County homeowner harmless from a higher county property tax bill.

County Saves Money; Board Spends It

Last week, the Hennepin County Board (sitting as the Hennepin County Regional Railroad Authority) voted 5 – 1 to authorize $34 million from “contingency funds” to buy 16 additional rail cars for the Central Corridor light rail line (CCLRT) between Minneapolis and St. Paul.  I voted “no” (Gail Dorfman was absent).

The CCLRT is estimated to cost just under $1 billion to build.  Part of that budget includes $144 million for contingencies – cost overruns, change orders, unforeseen construction problems that frequently arise in huge capital projects.

Because of a favorable bidding environment, bids for parts of the CCLRT project to date have come in $34 million under project estimates.

Good news, right?  Finally, a government project that actually comes in under budget and costs the taxpayers just a little bit less than originally planned (even if that project itself is a boondoggle that couldn’t survive any rational person’s cost-benefit analysis).

So what do we do?  Return the $34 million to the original funding entities, including Hennepin County, to provide some small relief to the taxpayers?

Nope.  Instead we use the opportunity to buy more light rail cars, which according to the original proposal and ridership estimates, we will not need unless ridership is higher than anticipated.

Jay Kohls from KSTP stopped by for a visit yesterday to talk about HennCo’s $25.8 million purchase of the office tower next door.  Here’s his story:

I gave this purchase the Golden Hydrant a few months ago.  Read that post here.

Taxpayer Victory: No New Auto Tax

On a 2-5 vote, the County Board yesterday defeated a proposal to assess a $5 tax onto every automobile in Hennepin County.  Commissioners Callison, Johnson, Opat and Stenglein joined me in voting “no”.

The rationale given for the new tax: It would benefit property tax payers in the county by shifting $4 million per year off the property tax role and onto automobile owners – an appropriate user fee for those who use the roads.

To argue that creating a new tax on our constituents somehow benefits them is … curious.  In reality, I think there were probably two more important motives behind this proposal:

1. More Money.  Government at every level is always looking for new sources of revenue.  While the amount this new tax would have yielded was small in the grand scheme of a $1.56 billion budget, it was new money nonetheless.  And “naive” would be a mild descriptor for anyone who believed we would actually make any long-term cut in property taxes to offset the new tax.

Yesterday, the Board heard a resolution for a new “Wheelage Tax” on all county taxpayers, consisting of a $5 annual fee on every automobile in the county.  We postponed a vote on the proposal until next Tuesday’s board meeting.

I stated yesterday at our meeting that I am enthusiastically opposed to this proposal.  The argument for the new tax is that it will bring in an extra $4 million per year, which we need in order to keep our county roads and bridges in decent repair.  Hennepin County has an annual budget of $1.56 BILLION.  If the upkeep of our roads and bridges has become such a low priority that we cannot even find enough in a $1.56 billion budget to keep them in decent condition, then we need to sit down and reprioritize our spending because something is royally messed up.

I don’t know what the debate or vote will reveal next week.  Stay tuned…

Focus Turns Heavily To Everything but Roads

Last week, the County Board passed the 2030 Transportation Systems Plan (“the Plan”) for Hennepin County which will guide our transportation investment and direction for the next twenty years.  The Plan is a long, sweeping and very consequential document, and it represents a dramatic change in policy and transportation vision for the state’s largest county – a change I believe is negative and very damaging to most of the residents of Hennepin County.

The Plan passed on a 5 – 1 vote.  I voted no.  (Randy Johnson was absent).

Golden Hydrant Goes to Purchase of New Downtown Office Building

The county board voted 6 – 1 today to purchase the “701 Building” across the street from the Hennepin County Government Center for $25.8 million.  The Star Tribune yesterday gave an accurate description of the then-expected decision:

Seeking to consolidate the county’s downtown Minneapolis office rentals, the Hennepin County Board Tuesday is expected to buy a pink-and-blue glass office tower that’s across the street from the Government Center.

Commissioners will vote on a $25.8 million purchase agreement for the 701 Building, an 18-story structure at 701 4th Av. S. The deal would be one of Hennepin County’s most significant building acquisitions in recent years. Rarely has the county bought an office building so big, expensive and relatively new.

But the 701, county real estate manager Michael Noonan said, “is a good opportunity to own rather than lease.”

The county’s public defenders office already rents there. If the deal closes in early June, the first new batch of county employees — from the Environmental Services building near Target Field — would move in this fall. That building is slated for closing to make room for a new light-rail platform.

Counting the public defenders, the county then would occupy a third of the building’s 287,000 square feet.

I voted “no” on this purchase as it will bring Hennepin County into the downtown commercial leasing business in a significant way for many years.  The assumptions upon which the decision was based include the county leasing out approximately 150,000 square feet of prime downtown office space to commercial tenants immediately upon purchase and continuing to lease at least a portion of that floor space for ten years – and likely much longer.

County Board votes 6 – 1 to ban smoking anywhere on county property – including in your own car.

The Hennepin County Board voted yesterday to ban smoking anywhere on county property (excluding county roads), including in privately-owned automobiles in county parking lots.  This new policy will replace the one we’ve had on the books for several years which prohibits smoking in county buildings and within 45 feet of any building entrance.  I voted against the change.

Before the final vote, I offered an amendment to exclude the automobile provision from the new policy, but that amendment failed on a 3 – 4 vote (with Jan Callison and Mark Stenglein joining me).

Hennepin County has a strong policy already in place, but for whatever reason, we’re not enforcing it.  That lack of enforcement has led to complaints about employees and others having to walk through a gauntlet of smokers just to get inside the Hennepin County Government Center downtown.  I’ve got a novel idea regarding how to solve that problem – ENFORCE THE POLICY WE HAVE IN PLACE.  It would certainly be less time-consuming and expensive than expanding the policy to an extreme level and trying to enforce that instead.

I understand the rationale behind this ban: Smoking is a very poor personal choice that is unhealthy and potentially deadly and we want to do whatever we can to discourage people from making that choice.  There is a point on the continuum, however, when government should stop trying to prevent people from making unhealthy personal decisions.  Different people will put that point in different places, but can’t we all at least agree that the point falls somewhere short of banning people from smoking in their own cars.

We had a choice to make yesterday between a relatively straight-forward, simple solution to a problem (enforcing our current policy) and a much more complex and expensive solution to that problem (over-the-top expansion of our policy).  We chose the latter.  Only in government…

Below is a good story on our vote from Fox9:

Smoking Banned on Hennepin County Property: MyFoxTWINCITIES.com