On Northfield Tax Hikes, Many Draw a Line at Aid for Businesses
BY JEFFREY JUUL
On Sept. 30, a new Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Bridgewater Commons broke ground just south of downtown Northfield.
The restaurant may be an early sign of recovery, but some members of local government has said the city should offer more tax incentives to businesses in order to attract business to Northfield and thus create new jobs.
These incentives would be paid for substantially by new property taxes, an idea that is not going down well in many quarters.
“I’m dead set against any new or higher property taxes,” says Jim Pence, a 26 year Northfield resident and homeowner who works at Carleton College. “I just moved into a new home and to be honest, I’m poor. I don’t need any more taxes. These taxes are starting to be crazy.
“I think businesses will turn around and that homeowners and the workforce will end up taking a blow so corporations can profit. I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” Pence said.
Many argue that the city is already doing enough in the way of helping out the local economy.
“I’m not opposed when my property taxes increase if it’s used for a school
referendum or education,” says Northfield resident Candyce Lelm. “I would be opposed if it was for economic development. The city should and does offer public and private financing in the forms of grants and low interest loans. Perhaps there is some state funding available too.”
Many others draw the line between tax increases earmarked for vital services, and others that would subsidize tax incentives for businesses.
The Northfield city council recently voted to levy a citywide property tax increase that will mostly effect homeowners whose property is appraised higher than $300,000. The council will seek final approval in December.
While taxes for homeowners have increased, those for commercial properties have decreased or stayed the same. This is troublesome to many of Northfield’s citizens who are wondering why big corporations see tax breaks while ordinary citizens are seeing their tax rates skyrocket.
“I would not support a tax directed toward economic development,” said Russell Bauer, who recently relocated to Northfield from Bloomington, Minnesota.
In Bloomington, “taxes were about 25% less than they are here in Northfield,” Bauer said. “I feel that a raise in my property taxes to give local businesses a bit of a break would not be of benefit in the long term nor the short as a city such as Northfield lacks economic all-star attractions.”
“I would not be in favor of taxing property owners to build more shops and restaurants,” said Doug Foxgrover of Northfield. “This is the kind of work that banks, venture capitalists, and other lending institutions should be doing.”
In Northfield, like many other small towns in America, the recession has hit hard.
Taxes seem to be the major issue for city councils everywhere—where the city usually wants to levy new taxes, against local opposition.
In most cities, taxes have increased well above wage increases. Concerned citizens often want to help but due to the economic decline are forced to object to tax hikes, hoping that the economy will finally right itself.
Copyright @ 2009 Pressville
Your statement that “while taxes for homeowners have increased, those for commercial properties have stayed the same” is completely inaccurate in its primary substance. The taxes on the commercial properties in Northfield have increased steadily since the state instituted the State general tax which applies ONLY to commercial properties; I own a DT building and one year recently my taxes doubled, while my residential taxes (in NF) only very slightly increased.
At the recent Forum held by the Chamber of Commerce, Joe Grundhoefer, the owner of the Rube-n-stein, said that his taxes had increased 384% in the last eight years.
Most residential property owners have no idea that they pay taxes at a base rate of 1%, while the base rate for commercial is 1 1/2 %, and then there is the onerous state general tax which residents do not pay at all.
Yet another factor is that the assessor devalued all residential properties this year, and all commercial properties stayed at the same market value. (Except Target, which according to the chart given out to the council by the city’s Director of Finance, Kathleen McBride, is the only commercial property in Northfield to have received a market DE-valuation… **** There’s your next story!)
Anyway… keep up the basically very good work of this project… just work a little harder on the facts, please.
Kiffi,
Thanks so much for the continued oversight by community members. Not living here full-time can be a challenge for all the writers on Pressville in that we are only getting small snapshots of what is going on and try our best to relay that information. Although I didn’t make it as clear as I could have, what I was trying to say is that for the most part, commercial taxes, according to the Northfield News, have remained the same for some time up until now. The Northfield News says that “since residential property owners would pay about the same as last year, the owners of commercial and industrial properties — which remained similarly valued in past years — will pick up the slack.” That’s why I made the statement I did and perhaps I should have looked into a little more but I think the Northfield News is a trusted news source for the city of Northfield. The story can be read at
http://www.northfieldnews.com/news.php?viewStory=49748
Hi again Kiffi, just to clarify, I didn’t mean to imply in my earlier comment that the Northfield News was incorrect about recent property tax trends in the story I cited. I misinterpreted that article; and my apologies for that. The point of the Northfield News piece was that the assessed values of most residential properties in Northfield have fallen in the past year (by an average 8.4 percent), while the assessed values of commercial properties have generally been unchanged. Since properties with higher assessed values pay more taxes, commercial properties will thus assume a greater share of the overall tax burden if the proposed 5 percent property tax increase in Northfield is passed by the city council in December. I take your point too about commercial property taxes rising in recent years, a fact the Northfield News documented among downtown businesses in this article: http://www.northfieldnews.com/news.php?viewStoryPrinter=22874
Jeff: There’s a lot to be learned by following the NFNews with an analytical eye. I think the NFNews is a”trusted news source” for some, and is not for many others. I’m sure your prof would prefer that you do your own research, rather than relying on the newspaper.
I certainly do not intend that to be as harsh as it may sound in this sort of written comment; I am smiling warmly as I say “After all, isn’t learning to do research that satisfies a journalistic standard the reason for this class?”
Remember, the standard is two primary sources for a stated fact…
Good luck, and above all, enjoy what you’re doing.