Area residents learn why taxes increased

HARTINGTON — Three dozen Cedar County residents turned out last week to get a better idea on how their tax dollars are being spent and why some entitities had to raise taxes.

Representatives from Cedar County, the city of Laurel, the city of Randolph and Wynot Public School were on hand at the joint public hearing to answer questions from area residents.

The “Truth in Taxation” hearing was established by the state legislature in 2021 in an effort to better inform tax payers about how their money is being spent as local governments vote on property tax increases.

Cedar County Clerk Dave Dowling said the county mailed out 8,617 postcards inviting Cedar County residents to attend the hearing. The postcards cost 45 cents each to mail out, he said.

There were no time limits placed on the meeting, but there were very few questions from the audience, so the hearing itself only lasted 18 minutes.

The four entities were required by state law to attend the special meeting because their boards were requesting to raise the property tax asking above the two percent, plus allowable growth percentage tax lid put in place in 2021 by the Nebraska legislature.

Dowling said valuations allowed the county to raise taxes an additional .7 percent above the two percent lid. This equates to $259,000, he said.

That figure, Dowling said, does not provide enough funding to provide the necessary government services here and pay for a bond issue the county has for county road repairs.

'The County Board did a bond issue on some blacktop roads. They did one in Randolph and they are going to do one (each) in Hartington, Bow Valley and South Yankton,' he said.

The payment on that $2.3 million bond issue is $357,000 a year, he said.

'That right there pushed Cedar County over, requiring us to be here at this meeting,' he said.

Dowling said additional funds are also being spent to replace a bridge in District 3 that will cost $1.3 million, install a box culvert in District 1 that will cost $425,000 and another box culvert in District 2 that will cost $400,000.

The county board transferred $1 million from the inheritance tax fund into the budget to help pay these expenses, however, that still wasn't enough to keep from raising property taxes, Dowling said.

Before the transfer, the inheritance fund had $3.7 million in it. Dowling expects a lot of the funds in that inheritance tax account will eventually be needed to pay for the trials in the Laurel quadruple murder case.

Laurel City Administrator Mark McCoy said his city’s 2023-24 property tax request is $281,376, which is an increase of $37,884 over last year. This equates to a four percent increase in the tax rate, McCoy said.

McCoy said increased operating expenses forced the city to raise the extra funds.

Randolph City Treasurer Josh Rayford said operating cost increases are a big factor in the increase in Randolph, as well. The additional funds are also needed, he said, because the city has an annual bond payment of $75,000 for its floodplain project.

“That eats up a lot of our tax request,” he said. Wynot Supt. Paul Hans said the Wynot School Board realizes they have one of the highest tax levies in the state at $1.12. He was pleased that number was able to go down by two cents this year.

“Being able to bring that down a bit this year was huge for us,” Hans said.

Hans said the school is spending funds on routine maintenance, like upgrading the HVAC system in the elementary school.

“We’re just trying to take care of what we’ve got,” he said.