A recent survey by Rep. Dan Dorman reveals that only 46 percent of his constituents want to solve our state budget crisis by raising taxes. Of those who want to see increased taxes, only 6 percent want to see the property taxes raised. I’ve been telling the Republicans for years that most people hate property taxes.

Why do we need property taxes, anyway? We need them because they are the primary funding source for local government. Your tax statement includes a city portion, school portion and the portion we pay to the county for their needs. In this discussion, I would like to focus only on the portion that is collected by the city. We use the city property tax to fund our police and fire departments, clean our streets, operate our parks, run the library and to finance all of the other services we expect from our community. The more taxes we raise locally, the better we manage this money, and the more we reinvest in our community, the better place Albert Lea will be to live and work.

Let’s take a look at our tax history in Albert Lea. It might be instructive to see how much money we raise to run the town and where it comes from. Our 2003 city budget was approved at approximately $12.5 million. Of that amount, 54 percent was anticipated to be funded by state aid (LGA). In other words, the state of Minnesota was expected to pay over half of our budget. Albert Lea rates right up there with the city of Virginia, Minn., as the highest per-capita recipients of state welfare in Minnesota. Nobody gets more of their budget paid by the state than we do. Of the total anticipated expenditures, we expect our local citizens to pay only 13 percent of the total cost of local government or about $1.6 million. It might be interesting to compare how much money Albert Lea collects from its citizens as compared to our neighboring communities. For purposes of illustration, I will take an example of an average home in our community that would be valued for taxes at $75,000. The various cities in Freeborn County would collect these amounts of taxes on this $75,000 house:

Albert Lea $168.39; Alden $827.06; Clarks Grove $201.02; Conger $447.42; Emmons $512.21; Freeborn $818.35; Geneva $310.94; Glenville $372.44; Hartland $780.57; Hayward $963.49; Hollandale $561.90; Manchester $243.02; Myrtle $290.19; Twin Lakes $309.70.

If you own your home and file for the homestead tax credit, you would pay less. For Albert Leans, the credit on the above house would be $59.32 and you would only pay the city $109.07 per year to run the city. Sounds like a pretty good deal, doesn’t it? Maybe it really isn’t such a good deal after all. Does it appear to you that our fair city is charging enough to make proper reinvestments in our quality of life and our city infrastructure? Is this why we cannot afford to clean up our lakes, take the bumps out of our streets, keep raw sewage out of the lakes, repair Katherine Island, fund the Senior Citizen Center, etc.?

Of that $109.07 that is paid to the city, let’s take a look at how much of the total is used to fund essential services.

Police $26.45; fire department $12.45; street department $3.33; street maintenance $5.96; snow removal $3.32; storm sewers $1.87; recreation dept. $4.56; senior center 89 cents; parks $6.31; library $6.88; lake improvement 27 cents; miscellaneous $36.78.

Our creative tax management policies over the past few years have netted us tremendous state aid to keep taxes down and government aid payments at the top. Is it any wonder that we now face the prospect of losing a highly disproportionate amount of state aid when the state is running a deficit? When welfare payments get cut, those who depend upon them the most are at the greatest risk. That’s the position Albert Lea may be in next year.

Furthermore, we all know that businesses must reinvest in buildings, tools, equipment, and personnel if they wish to remain competitive. Is it any different with cities? A business may elect to milk its assets and run the business into the ground if they don’t expect to remain viable into the future. Does Albert Lea have a future? Are we doing the best we can to assure that the future will be bright for both us and our children? Is there ever a better time to take a good look at where we are today and where we expect to be tomorrow? This will take some planning which is long overdue.

The Chamber announced on Feb. 10 that they were taking the lead in a planning process. We’re still waiting on them but without much hope. They have announced that they are working on a top down-plan for the city. We all know what happens with that type of plan. City Hall shelves are full of them. We should never forget that this is our town, not theirs. It’s our future and we should all have a say in what that future will be.

Tony Trow is an Albert Lea resident and president of Destination: Albert Lea.