Gilbert’s largest budget ever earned unanimous preliminary approval from Town Council on May 2, pushing the town across the $2 billion threshold for the coming fiscal year.
Council also approved a $31.6 million preliminary secondary property tax levy, also a record size but one that keeps property owners’ tax rate flat at $0.99 per $100 assessed valuation. That passed on a 6-1 vote with Council Member Jim Torgeson voting in dissent.
As such the town’s property taxpayers will pay more as a function of the increased value of their homes. State law caps that increase at 5% under most circumstances as it relates to property tax valuation.
Both the actions are preliminary, with final approval coming at a public hearing in June, as required by state law. However, the final budget cannot be larger than the approved preliminary budget.
The vote was significant as the town typically has passed the budget and levy on 5-2 votes with the council’s most conservative members voting against the budget and the levy. Last year’s dissenting voters, then-Vice Mayor Aimee Yentes and Council Member Laurin Hendrix, opted not to run for re-election.
This year’s cycle went with much less debate. Torgeson had expressed hope at an April 18 study session on the budget and levy that the town would reduce the rate to $0.98 per $100 assessed valuation to give a taxpayers a “tiny” victory.
Answering a question from Torgeson, Budget Director Kelly Pfost said the town did not bring back to council the lower rate because council did not have consensus at the meeting to do so.
Indeed, at the May 2 meeting, Council Member Yung Koprowski noted that the town does not have a primary property tax and that the secondary property tax is restricted to repaying voter-approved debt. In the town’s case, that covers debt from the sale of bonds to build the Public Safety Training Facility and another bonds package that pays for streets, transportation and infrastructure projects.
Koprowski said maintaining the rate means the town does not extend out the debt and ultimately make the taxpayer pay more in interest on the bonds, thus making it the financially prudent course of action.
Gilbert’s budget annually is much higher than the town spends in any given year as it includes all of the present and future funding for its capital improvement projects. For 2023-24, that portion makes up $1.36 billion of the budget.
At Koprowski’s request, Pfost showed council a pie chart of what that looked like, including new capital improvement projects and ones continuing from previous years.
The budget also includes nearly 44 new full-time equivalencies in the town’s employees. The overall budget is up $378.66 million from the current fiscal year to $2.05 billion.
The budget approved May 2 included one change from the one presented April 18 in study session. It added $56 million into capital improvement projects, representing construction costs for a police crime lab. Koprowski had requested it at the study session.
Mayor Brigette Peterson said she believed it to be a good idea to include those costs as a placeholder in the budget, but cautioned that the council has not come to a consensus that it could move forward on the town’s police department to have its own laboratory.
Tom Blodgett can be reached by email at tblodgett@iniusa.org or follow him @sp_blodgett on Twitter. We would like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org.
Tom Blodgett Senior News Editor | Gilbert @sp_blodgett
Meet Tom Tom Blodgett joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2022, when the company acquired Community Impact Newspaper's Phoenix-area properties. Raised in Arizona, he has spent more than 35 years in journalism in the state.
Community: He has served as an instructional professional in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication since 2005, and is editorial adviser to The State Press, the university's independent student media outlet. He also is director of operations for an 18U girls fastpitch softball team from Gilbert.
Education: Arizona State University with a BS in Journalism.
Random Fact: He lived in Belgium during his freshman year of high school.
Hobbies: Tweeting enthusiastically about ASU softball (season-ticket holder) and grumpily about other local sports (pessimistic fan).
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