Winthrop Council passes preliminary tax levy

by Michael Mattison
The budget for the City of Winthrop was the topic of discussion at a work session of the Winthrop City Council on Monday which was followed by a special meeting to approve its preliminary budget.
The City Council approved a preliminary increase to the tax levy at 18 percent.
The Council has been holding work sessions on the matter for awhile. The original recommended budget presented to the Council was about $2.2 million. The tax levy would have been $1,687,436.26 or an 82.4 percent increase. This total reflected everything that city staff wanted and also input from citizens on what they would like to see.
Since then the Council has worked at reducing that amount and at the public hearing had the levy adjusted to $1,091,270.51 or a 17.9 percent increase.
There was much discussion on a few topics and the public joined in on their views as well.
Ultimately, the Council did not reduce the amount that it will send to Sibley County at this time,
While the amount is not locked in, the Council can not increase the levy, it can leave it alone or decrease it. The final levy will be approved on December 1 with an alternate date of December 8.
Although the Council won’t be able to increase the levy amount, it can move money around to different areas in the budget.
Library issues dominated the discussion and drew many comments from the public in attendance.
Other budget items discussed were the police department, city council and whether or not public works employee wages should remain in the general budget, as it has in the past, or part of those wages be included in rate increases to the departments those employees work such as electric, water and wastewater.
A more detailed account of the previous cuts to the budget as well as discussion at the public hearing will appear in next week’s issue of the Winthrop News.