To the editor,
As you know, the City of International Falls relies on its property owners to support the city’s budget through property taxes. We are pleased that we were able to put together the city’s 2013 budget without an increase in your property taxes.
However, the price of everything goes up and we know that we will have to raise property taxes in the future to pay for these higher costs. It is for this reason, along with jobs, that our economic development authority was created and why we are working so hard on the Multi-Modal Facility District and other projects that will increase our property tax base. When we increase our tax base through economic development, the added tax base makes it easier for all taxpayers because the burden of a future increase is spread among more taxpayers.
The city will occasionally own property like the Multi-Modal Facility District which we are buying from Boise. However, we don’t want to own property any longer than it takes to develop it and to get it on the tax rolls. In the case of the Multi-Modal Facility District, we convinced the State of Minnesota to provide us with a $657,000 grant to put infrastructure into this property so that it can be developed by a private developer and placed on the tax rolls at a much higher value than it is now.
In order to benefit our taxpayers by this investment, we need to get this property in the city by annexation because only property within the city contributes to our tax base. Some of the property is inside the city limits but some of it is outside the city limits and therefore we have requested the county approve annexation of the portion of the property outside the city limits.
The discussions with the county are going well and we anticipate no problems reaching agreement on this annexation. After all, all residents of Koochiching County wherever they live benefit from the addition to the county tax base that the city creates when it develops property. County board members understand that developing the property as the city is doing increases the amount of taxes which that property contributes to the county as well as the city. Besides doing this with the Multi-Modal Facility District we will be doing this with the Donahue property just outside our city limits on the west edge of town once the planning process for use of this property is further along.
Economic development has been the No. 1 priority of this city council for at least the last eight years while I have been on it. We want more of it and if you pay property taxes you should want more of it, too.
Tim “Chopper” McBride
mayor
International Falls, MN
