FORKS –– For the first time in five years, the City Council has increased property taxes.
Council members voted 3-2 Tuesday night to approve a 1 percent increase in property taxes, the maximum allowed by law.
Council members Bruce Guckenberg, Kevin Hinchen and Juanita Weissenfels voted in favor of the increase, while Councilmen John Hillcar and Mike Breidenbach voted against it.
“I felt it was time to take it,” Guckenberg said. “It’s not a large amount of money. It works out to about a $1 a person.
“If we don’t take it, we’re just going to continue to slide backward.”
Hillcar said he voted against the increase because he felt it was unfair to residents and businesses that own property — be that real estate or personal property that is subject to the tax, especially when the revenue is not dedicated to any specific expenditure.
He said the tax increase would have a significant effect on logging and milling companies that own personal property.
“Yeah, 1 percent on the gross doesn’t seem like a lot of money, but it’s a permanent tax; it’s there forever,” Hillcar said.
The 1 percent raise will increase the city’s property tax revenue about $3,200, Clerk/Treasurer Audrey Grafstrom said.
Including the 1 percent increase and with increased values overall, the city’s revenue from property taxes is expected to increase from $161,000 in 2013 to $165,000 in 2014.
“I think we could probably have found $3,000 to cut somewhere else before we encumber anyone with the gumption to own their own business and property,” Hillcar said.
RAC-inflated budget
The council also received its first draft of the city’s budget for 2014.
Inflated by planned construction of the new $2.6 million Rainforest Arts Center, the budget for next year is $7,012,500, a steep hike from 2013’s budget of $3,926,000.
Current expense spending — the city’s operating budget — is slated to be $1,763,000, with police and jail services slated to spend $1,432,435 of that.
Sales tax revenues are expected to increase from $425,000 in 2013 to $480,000 in 2014.
Most of that rise, Grafstrom said, is from sales tax on construction of the Rainforest Arts Center and from remodels by Peninsula College, which is preparing to move into the old Bank of America building, and at Forks Community Hospital, which is expanding and building a new emergency room entrance.
Water and streets
Water and sewer rates are chained to the consumer price index, which will be set in January.
Few city-funded road projects are on the agenda for 2014.
The street budget will be $232,500, up a tick from the $231,000 of the 2013 budget.
The city will rebuild Spartan Avenue next year. The bulk of funding will come from a grant from the state’s Transportation Improvement Board.
The council’s next hearing on the 2014 budget will be at its Nov. 25 meeting.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Joe Smillie can be reached at 360-681-2390, ext. 5052, or at jsmillie@peninsuladailynews.com.