The Juneau Assembly Finance Committee voted to set this year’s mill rate at 10.16 on Wednesday.
The mill rate determines how much property tax the city collects from residents. One mill is equal to $1 dollar per thousand dollars in property value. That means that for every $1,000 in taxable property value, there would be a tax of $10.16.
Because property values have gone up, the city would get more property tax, even with a lower mill rate.
Assembly member Michelle Hale proposed the 10.16 rate. She said that would get the average property tax increase close to the rate of inflation since 2020, which is 16%.
“Just as households are experiencing inflation, so is city government,” she said. “Unless we want to reduce our services dramatically, I believe we need to have a mill rate that both does something to reduce the total property tax but also make sure we can pay for city services.”
At the start of its budget process, city staff proposed a mill rate of 10.28 – a slightly lower rate than last year’s. That would have allowed the city to put $4 million into savings. Assembly member Christine Woll spoke in favor of that proposal.
“I commend city staff for putting together a budget that is balanced,” Woll said. “Obviously there’s assumptions in there. If we want to challenge those assumptions, we probably should have done that earlier. But I’m much more comfortable passing a balanced budget.”
The 10.16 rate proposed by Hale would have left the city with a $1.1 million budget deficit. To remedy that, the Assembly voted to reduce the amount put into savings from $4 million to $3 million.
Assembly member Alicia Hughes-Skandijs said that could work this year, but not long term.
“I certainly couldn’t live with doing that for more than a year,” she said. “I think it starts to emulate what they do up the hill, as far as not making real decisions and then paying for our underfunding the government through our savings, which I think is a bad long-term plan.”
Assembly member Greg Smith proposed lowering the mill rate even further, to 10.0.
“I think we can provide relief to the property owner this year,” he said. “If the growth isn’t as large, if the market cools, we can adjust that in the future.”
Smith’s proposal was voted down.
The 10.16 mill rate passed in a 6-1 vote, with Woll voting no. Members Carole Triem and ‘Wáahlaal Gíidaak were absent.
The full Assembly will vote on the budget on June 12.
