Boise’s budget is moving forward. What the council said about taxes, defunding police
Boise’s proposed 2021 budget is moving forward — but not every member of the Boise City Council approved of it.
The budget for the 2021 fiscal year, proposed by Mayor Lauren McLean, is $34.2 million less than 2020’s, in part because McLean proposed a 0% tax increase for property owners.
But the $730.5 million proposed budget also allocates more money to the Boise Police Department than last year, at the same time activists across the country are asking local leaders to defund the police and instead use the money to fund social services.
As demonstrators and counter-protesters gathered outside Boise City Hall, here’s what the Boise City Council discussed:
City property taxes
State law allows cities to raise property taxes by up to 3% each year without voter approval, which this year would be worth about $4.8 million. The budget that was approved and moved on to first reading by the City Council on Tuesday instead takes the 0% McLean suggested.
The decision leaves that $4.8 million in taxpayer’s pockets, but your taxes may still go up — rising home values, combined with a tax burden increasingly shifted toward residential properties and a static homeowner’s exemption mean that property tax rates can rise even if local governments spend less.
The average assessed residential property value in Boise rose from $330,200 to $351,023 from last year to this. So if you own what the city estimates to be an average home, up about $21,000 in value from last year, the city’s share of your taxes will go up about $38 dollars this year. The homeowner’s exemption, capped at $100,000, covers less of your home’s value than it did last year, and your December city tax bill would rise from $1,311.80 to $1,349.62, or 2.9%.
The 0% increase would save the average homeowner about $40. But Virgel Clark, who lives in Southeast Boise and testified before the council, said that didn’t actually make a difference.
“This budget, in my opinion, provides no meaningful property tax relief for most taxpayers,” Clark told the council.
McLean originally proposed a 2% property tax increase, a break from the full 3% Boise has taken for years. In June, Gov. Brad Little offered local governments statewide $200 million from the state’s share of funds under Congress’s $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief law. Little said they could use the money to cover public safety personnel costs next fiscal year if they used the savings in their own accounts to provide one-time property tax relief on December’s tax bills. The next day, McLean said she would adjust her budget proposal to a 0% increase.
Boise stands to get nearly $66 million in personnel costs reimbursed through Little’s relief program, according to an undated letter sent to the governor’s office from Lynda Lowry, Boise’s director of finance and administration. The letter, obtained by the Statesman, shows that amount covers nearly $33 million each for police officers and firefighters and $192,000 for emergency management staff.
McLean said Wednesday that it is the city’s intention and hope to move forward with the program but that the city is waiting to hear from state officials on whether the program is a legal use of the federal relief money.
Foregone taxes
The City Council voted to reserve the right to collect the $4.8 million in later years. That money is known as foregone tax money, which a government — such as a city or a county — declines to collect in a certain tax year. State law says the government entity is still entitled to that money and can collect it in future years as a clawback.
“I felt it was particularly important this year to recognize we are in a very tough time,” Council President Elaine Clegg told the council.
She pointed to how the state gets an automatic tax increase each year as incomes rise but that cities and other local governments must intentionally make the decision to do the same thing. That could at some point put the city in a “precarious position,” Clegg said, and she argued protecting the foregone taxes helps the city in the future.
There are some limits attached to the potential clawbacks. The resolution passed by the City Council requires that the taxes cannot be collected sooner than fiscal year 2023, or later if the state is in a recession. It also says that the council cannot collect more than one-third of all the foregone taxes in a single year.
“This doesn’t require us in any way to take our foregone,” Council Member Holli Woodings said. “However, I want to point out that just like with any business, just like with any family, the city’s expenses increase every year. ... It’s more expensive to maintain our parks, it’s more expensive to buy fertilizer, it’s more expensive to buy gas for vehicles and all of the various things that it takes to run our city in the way that our citizens have come to expect. The expectation that we tighten our belt, even in good years and perhaps reduce those services, I think isn’t a service to our citizens.”
Defunding the police
Those who testified before the Boise City Council had differing requests for the council regarding police — some asked the council to reallocate the police budget, while others, including former Mayor Brent Coles, asked the city to consider hiring more police officers or otherwise increase the police budget.
The Boise Police Department gets the largest portion of the city’s general fund budget. The 2020 budget allocated just over $70 million for the department, or about 29% of the general fund budget. The proposed 2021 budget proposes about $71.2 million, worth about 29.8% of the general fund budget.
The department is set to get five new police officers in the 2021 budget but will cut several unmarked civilian vehicles from its fleet.
McLean, as well as Ryan Lee, the city’s new police chief, have both said they do not support efforts to defund the police.
Council Member Jimmy Hallyburton proposed that Boise maintain the police department’s budget at $70 million rather than grant an increase, a motion that was seconded by Council Member Lisa Sánchez. He suggested the council hold on approving the rest of the money until the city was better able to talk with community members about how to use the money.
Hallyburton, a first-term council member sworn in in January, said he was struggling with the budget but that he had gotten thousands of emails about policing and reallocating funds. He said that while he always feels safe in Boise, he has heard from many who say they do not.
“People who don’t look like me, people who don’t have the same levels and layers of privilege that I do, I can’t look back at them and say, ‘well, you should, it’s a safe community,’” Hallyburton said. “If they don’t feel safe, then they don’t feel safe.”
The council ultimately rejected his suggestion in a 4-2 vote in which he and Sánchez dissented.
The budget ultimately was passed on an identical 4-2 vote, with Hallyburton and Sánchez again voting against it. Hallyburton said that he respected the work the city’s budgeting team put into the budget but that he was concerned about losing trust in the community if the city did not let community members better weigh in on the policing budget.
“I feel like that is what our community members are asking for,” he said.
This story was originally published July 21, 2020 at 11:20 PM.
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