City passes budget for FY 2020

Havre City Council met Wednesday and unanimously passed several resolutions involving the city’s annual budget.

Havre Finance Director and City Clerk Doug Kaercher said in an interview that the city lists the tax changes based on what is considered to be the largest lot in the city, a 50-by-140 ft. corner lot.

He added that some of the taxes are calculated using the square footage of the property and others by linear foot per street.

The budget was available for the review of the public since Aug. 16.

All of the taxes are renewals or updates of existing taxes, with no new taxes created.

A resolution levying and assessing a tax to defray the cost of maintaining street lights for Havre was passed by the council on final reading.

Kaercher said the lighting district has gone up $1.43 for a 50x140-foot lot from what it was last year. 

In a previous meeting, he said that the rate increase was due to NorthWestern Energy predicting a rate increase for the city in the upcoming year. 

The city also passed a resolution levying and assessing a tax on property within the city limits to defray the cost of maintaining streets for Havre.

Kaercher said that out of the four taxes assessed, the street maintenance tax has increased the most because of the city purchasing a new street grader and the council approving more materials for the department to use for upgrades to the city.

Street maintenance has gone up $10.43 cents for a 50-140-foot property, he said. He added that the money the city puts toward the street maintenance department is strictly for maintenance. According to state statute the city cannot use those funds to rebuild the streets. He added that the city is capable of making repairs and maintaining the streets, including a mill and overlay, but people generally need to approve special improvement districts — SIDs — for major work repairing or rebuilding streets.

“It’s how streets are really rebuilt,” he said. “That’s how they were originally built.”

In a number of cases, Havre streets are 50 to 75 years old, he said.

He added that the city can’t keep repairing and maintaining them forever. The city will reach a point where it will need to stress SIDs so it can rebuild the streets. 

Street maintenance last year ended spending 80 percent of what was planned, he said, because Havre Public Works Departmen didn’t purchase had some equipment planned, saving $50,000, and only used half of various materials the council allocated to the department.

He added that if the department had spent 100 percent of their budget, this year’s taxes would be significantly higher. 

The city also approved a resolution levying and assessing a tax on property within the city limits to defray the cost of Bullhook maintenance for the city.

Kaercher said that it has gone down for the city, a $1.54 change from last year for a 50x140-foot property He added that includes because the Bullhook storm drain repair project has been removed from the district taxes for this year.

A resolution levying and assessing a tax to defray the cost of solid waste services for the city of Havre was also passed by the council.

Kaercher said the city’s taxes are down $3.80 cents compared to last year for a 50-by-140-foot property.

Havre Public Works Director Dave Peterson said that Havre has one of the lowest costs for waste removal in the entire state. Cities larger or a similar size to Havre often contract the service out to private companies, but the city of Havre does the majority of the waste removal for the city.

The council passed a resolution adopting the budget for the coming year and a resolution fixing the annual tax levies for the fiscal year.

Kaercher said the total for the four assessments means Havre has had a $6.51 increase in taxes for a 50-by-140-foot property since last year. He added that the basic reality is the city gets a little bit of an increase in millage, approximately $30,000. But the increase won’t even be able to cover wage increases for the 100 employees the city has. 

He said that other funds such as the water and sewer system run more like a business, but no rate increase has been made this past year and he doesn’t expect a rate increase in the coming year.

“Right now it doesn’t appear that will be needed,” he said, adding that the city tries to look ahead at future projects to see what is needed and to act accordingly.

He added that the total budget is about $24.5 million, with approximately $2.7 million of the budget generated by people’s taxes and the rest coming from a mixture of sources such as levies and state and federal funds and grants.

“I think that’s incredible,” he said.