ST. CLOUD – In his first budget proposal since taking office in January, St. Cloud Mayor Jake Anderson on Monday outlined plans for a 4.5% increase to next year’s tax rate — and what he called a budgeting philosophy shift from his predecessor.
“For the past 20 years, we have operated under ‘capturing the growth,’ ” Anderson said at Monday’s City Council meeting. ”We are looking to move to a more of a strategic investment in fiscal sustainability."
Former Mayor Dave Kleis, who was first elected in 2005 and retired from his mayoral role in January, was known for keeping budgets lean. During his tenure, Kleis touted the city’s lower-than-state-average taxes and said that when adjusted for inflation, this year’s budget is about $6 million less than it was during his first year as mayor.
Kleis managed any budget increases by “capturing the growth,” meaning any new spending mirrored the increase in taxable property the city saw during the previous year.
While that kept taxes low, it often didn’t address inflation and has created the inability to keep the proper level of financial reserves for an emergency — and that gap gets larger every year, Anderson said Monday.
“We need to begin chipping away at it,” he said, warning that if taxes are not increased this year, the city will dip below the desired level of reserves. That could make the city’s bond rating dip, which would make future projects more expensive, he said.
The city is also facing a backlog of costs related to having allowed the replacement of equipment and technology to fall behind. Anderson said almost two-thirds of the city’s vehicles and equipment are overdue for replacement, some by more than two decades.
“Deferring [the] purchase of snow plows, deferring HVAC replacements … that creates this gap [that] continues to get larger,” he said. “And if we don’t begin to act now, this gap will become, in my opinion, completely unsustainable and even more difficult to fix.”
