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Finance director offers cemetery tax, convenience fees and ballot option to shore up public‑safety funding
Summary
Finance Director Jonathan Flores outlined new revenue options — a cemetery tax outside the 3.5% cap, a utility credit‑card convenience fee, exempting city facilities from utility charges, a rolling debt program and the possibility of a public vote on public‑safety expenditures — and warned of valuation losses tied to state exemptions.
Finance Director Jonathan Flores told the council the city faces structural pressures and presented several revenue measures intended to stabilize operations and support public safety.
Key proposals: Jonathan raised the idea of levying a dedicated cemetery property tax outside the state’s 3.5% cap to replace roughly $96,000 in general‑fund support; he said that would add about 2¢ to the tax rate and cost the average homeowner roughly $2 a year. He also proposed a credit‑card convenience fee for utility payments (a 3% fee capped at $2 for utilities) that could recover roughly $96,000 of the city’s $130,000 in general‑fund card fees and almost all of the utility card fees (estimated $516,000). Another option discussed: exempting city facilities from utility charges (projected general‑fund impact ~$464,000 per year unless negotiated rates are used).
Ballot option: Jonathan outlined a route to place public‑safety expenditures before voters if the council wants to fund pensions, pay plans or capital items that exceed the 3.5% cap; that path would require accelerating the budget schedule to early August to meet ballot deadlines for November.
Budget pressures: He flagged a potentially large valuation loss from a new state exemption for business personal property that could reduce valuations by about $234 million and cost the city an estimated $1.8–1.9 million in property tax revenue in the coming cycle.
Representative quote: "If we were to do it at that $96,000, it would be about a 2‑cent increase to the tax rate," Jonathan said of a cemetery tax.
Why it matters: Jonathan framed these ideas as ways to create more stable revenue and to target increases for public‑safety needs; any of them would require legal review and council action and, in the case of a voter measure, accelerated schedule and public outreach.
Ending note: Council members asked staff for legal vetting and estimated household impacts; Jonathan and staff said they would return with more precise modeling and timelines.
