presentation to kind of go through certainly opening up for any particular question they do have some materials as well we put together for a kind of illustrated purposes to help answer questions certainly for anybody misses this or would like to see this in person will also be giving this presentation as we're required to do his part of a kind of truth in taxation hearing or a kind of a public budget meeting on december first and then we're looking to adopt a budget on december fifteenth for that so the for the purpose of that really is just to kind of give a general overview of the budget that's been proposed for twenty sixteen something that the city council has been working on since may in a number of different budget with the general fund and talked about the different utility funds the focus of this budget presentation so tonight's discussion will really be focused on the budget how it all ties together in terms of everything that we discuss in everything that we do on a daily basis how it all ties kind into the budget the strategic plan this really kind of answers the why we do things the way we do them the accomplishments just taking a brief look at some of the things that we have done thus far and then also some of the things that we're planning to do for the two thousand and sixteen budget in terms of what's been laid out with that and then by the numbers just kind of walking through the different aspects of the budget kind of giving an idea of everything how it's laid out in terms of all the different departments expenditures what us and what it looks like from a property tax standpoint as an example and then just kind of at the end just want to talk a little bit about some of the things that the city council's been talking about in terms of future obstacles challenges issues that are kind of ongoing these are the things that we talk about on a regular basis but these are the things that really kind of been at the forefront in many respects of our budget discussions so the budget how it all ties together so this was a slide that we talked with the city council at their november fourth retreat talking a little bit about how we kind of get to where we go to and how we make the decision to look at the aspect of the vision goals and strategies on the lefthand side of the everything that we do in that if you look at the value livery in the production those are the things those are the what we do that the productive aspect of it also helps to contribute to the outcomes and successes that we do enjoy so the strategic plan this is the why we do what we do the strategic plan is as i've indicated before is if anybody has an certainly encourage them to take an opportunity to read through the strategic plan in my humble opinion it really is a simple document really easy to understand the city council and several staff spent a lot of time putting it together and it really lays out these core areas or this vision of what they hope the future of north st paul really to be and some of the are hoping to be achieved with that within those core areas there are six core areas and six vision statements tied to each one of those are twenty three goals and eighty eight specific strategies or objectives contained within it the core areas in those vision statements the community engagement communication this was really the intent was how we're going to reengage the community how we're going to make sure people are informed opportunities to attend different things like this to learn about things to provide input on things and just to become better informed overall so this can be anything from traditional newsletters to electronic mediums to just civic engagement opportunities such as we've been doing with the downtown project and trying to get people involved in helping provide feedback for the long term future and helping to generate ideas residential of character neighborhoods this one is a really key aspect in this is something the city council i would say spent the most time talking about is being as it were predominantly residential in nature the importance of making sure that our neighborhoods are well preserved and that sustainable in the long term future and we maintain those housing the quality of our housing stock in making sure that our residents are also have the ability of living active and healthy lifestyle so residential character neighborhoods was was really kind of the even though it's listed a second on here i would say many aspects it is to the one of the top ones for a particular reason business an economic development cream place making that fosters him an opportunity again how do we make it north st paul attractive to both young families and entrepreneurs or corporations or mom and pop  community and then not only that but connect them to the residential and the and the recreational opportunities that we have  also walking biking even in the transportation or even contemplates mass service those sorts of things as well operational services provide an innovative high quality customer service with a personal touch these are some of the things internally  that the business community us in the residents trying to provide that really good high quality service develop look at better more efficient ways of doing things even possibly saving also helping us to identify issues and solutions that are as we talked about each budget or just things in general as they come up so some of the things that we have done as part and so retreat back on november fourth member seventh we had a conversation related to what are all the different things that we've done thus far in this this list is really intended to be more of a synopsis and that list we had a huge pages of lists of things that we've done so far this again what we've done is we really placed an emphasis on street utility work we completed the twenty fourteenth street and utility reconstruction project also known as the chippewa project completed that in two thousand and fifteen and we started the design work on the twenty sixteen project that's coming up last year we had the ability of really kind of taking a look whether fortune or unfortunately we had a street in the community that kind of blew up on us and so we started having long conversations about maybe in the odd years or the years opposite when we do street reconstruction projects looking at larger scale street maintenance so we did a project last year and this was intended this was that odd year so it was to look at doing a larger project this year and we just completed in september or mid or mid october the eleventh avenue mill and overlay project again a focus on identified park we've just installed a new plague structure at tower park we also installed five new merry go rounds at several the different parks and we're in the conversations right now about replacing the k c lake park shelter and we're going through the process of finalizing the designs and working with the city council determine what those next steps are we dedicated the new veterans park and that's been a huge thing for the community very well appreciated in many respects i think we heard the other night at the council meeting just how envious other communities are of north st paul for this wonderful park that we have in the community and it's certainly a good anchor point for the downtown because it's right on the edge of downtown and certainly is going to be attractive for future generations and for people just to come and pay their respects to veterans or just the country in  general funding a home loan programs this was something that actually we talked about as being a priority for twenty sixteen we work through the process of creating two home improvement programs one is really the ability for people to  get a low interest loan through the city to do some home improvements up one hundred thousand dollars a year has been budgeted up to twenty five thousand dollars per loan and then also emerges repair program so people that are on a fixed income might have the ability of accessing some funds to assist them with a variety of different needs replacing a furnace if it goes out a water heater for goes out some other things and so we've been working with the with the greater metropolitan housing corporation also known as gimmick to put together those programs we finalized those at the a meeting on tuesday night here just last night and will be looking to get that information out in hope hoping that the community will take advantage of those we also introduced a new logo earlier this year which paid homage to the the forty four foot tall snowman that just sits just a block from city hall we initiated community oriented policing some of the events that we had this last year the couple youth events the bike rodeo and the lunch lunches in the schools with cops and also fishing with the cop in august they have also partnered with the fire department to have a public safety night that was on the first day of the car show that was hugely attended and i think we counted the success of the attendance by the number of hot dogs that were given away that night and salvation army gave away almost almost over a thousand hot dogs that night of the event they had a community meeting last fall they're planning on doing one here in december to one introduce people to the officers get to know them a little bit better but then also  talk about some things that people can do to protect themselves in the wintertime from theft and those sorts of things and so they'll be a good opportunity for people to come and learn some tricks of the trade in terms of helping to keep your property safe greater access to the  officers via the assigned neighborhood districts and then we all second community service officer which was one of the things that was identified in unity policing aspect and just a few other things continued visits with business owners we started to take a harder look at sidewalk maintenance we put a greater emphasis on trying to address some of the issues and concerns with the downtown area to remove safety hazards we completed our six student home project and we started our seventh compliance efforts and we are currently working on developing a full program related to that we have hired also to code compliance part time code compliance officers to really engage in a more proactive approach to code enforcement code compliance rather than sending people letters kind of that personal touch going door to door and having more of a personal interaction with people and helping them understand some of the issues that they have from a code standpoint and then just an increased presence at the community events so and not just not just that the city is there but we have staff that are there interacting we've had big truck night we've had fire department and police department some of the different events other staff and some of the different events we've used the car showed an opportunity to talk about downtown and get feedback from people what they what they see is important for the downtown area as well so some of the things that are still ongoing we're talking about the downtown vision in process what the downtown could look like in the future that ultimately could lead to a reconstruction project down there of some type of some magnitude we've been talking about small impacts medium impact large impacts and what it what does that look like we recently took citizens and business owners on a tour of other downtowns as well as downtown or st paul just to get a feel for what other people have done other communities that have been successful not was that tour of itself was very successful i mentioned earlier the case the lake park building continuing the work on that community survey we sent out we got results information and people returned their surveys back in july an overwhelming response to the tune of almost four thousand five hundred or more than four thousand eight hundred surveys and so it's taking us longer to get that information compiled and put together and hoping to have that completed hopefully in december the new website looking to get that launch in january or february and sixteen and with that would come the advent of kind of the e commerce the ability for people to apply for permits and licenses all over the web in addition to just updating the city's website in its entirety i skipped over one community in way finding signage we've had a  committee of citizens and business owners that staff to kind of develop entrance sign kind of concepts locations for those kind of the navigation signs in the community that you know if you're on seventeenth avenue and you you just entering north st paul it will tell you so many blocks to downtown or so many blocks to this park those sorts of things so how can we improve navigation for for people and also at the same time those also help encourage people that took walking bike more than just getting in their car and driving from point a to point b the ever bridge or learning system this this is that system that people can sign up for that they will get alert text message alerts and phone call or it's if we have a power outage or there's a water main break or even just updates notifications on different events within the in the community and things like that and things that people really want to know about and so it's an opportunity that we can really isolate if we have a power outage in one part of the community we can isolate that with his phone system and then those people get an automated message informing them that when they come home they might see the blinking lights because there's been a power outage and then through council direction we've been working on a update to our payment management program which will ultimately affect our capital improvement plan or street maintenance plan and then the surface water or flooding so that was done in all that information's being fine tuning will be coming to council after the first of the year for further evaluation and kind of next steps so through the budget process we've talked about some of the things that we will do or we hope to accomplish those really are to continue the efforts as it relates to street and park improvements in maintenance in those particular areas the budget does include an increase in funding for those those that increase in funding is a levy increase that is currently included within the budget we'll talk about that mor minutes starting to add in reserves for a long term facility maintenance needs it's one of the things that you know we've got great aunt paula city hall the public works project some point significant maintenance is probably going to be needed whether it's replacing the heating and ventilation units took point of bricks all those sorts of things new roughs those things are all costly and so those are the things we need to start planning and preparing for now improving accessibility by addressing sidewalk and trails this is really aimed at not only what we've done in the downtown area to remove some of the safety issues down there but also to try to identify areas where we have gaps in the system and filling in those gaps so people they need don't know that they can walk safely from their home to their park if there's a trailer or a sidewalk in their area so one of the things we can do to try to improve some of the accessibility in the short term right now until we get to starting addressing some of the bigger term long term issues develop a living streets demonstration project this is tied to the living streets plan the environmental commission has been working with staff to identify number areas in the community where we can start demonstrating some of the things within this plan to start building some local support for some of those different projects that are out there so they've identified a number of areas where they would like to do with those sorts of things and that will be coming to the council on december fifteenth for further discussion and we've talked a little bit about the community sign e sort of trying to improve community signage provide way finding signage continue to grow our community policing efforts and programs bringing back the monthly newsletter and making a better use overall of social media continuing our efforts in that area and then just to continue a staff development  training because a well trained educated workforce provides for better efficiencies long term for any organisation is just a couple important things to take a note and this is one of the things that really helps when we get into the conversation about what our property taxes are the good news is that all properties in north st paul for that consecutive consecutive year have increased in value residential seen the greatest increase so they went up six but a little over six and a half percent in two thousand and sixteen not quite as high as eight half percent last year but the difference is that the commercial properties remain relatively flat for twenty sixteen after a slight decrease last year and if you recall with the recession after that so we're starting to see the residential properties come back up and so it's just a matter of time before the commercial properties are going to start to start to take their swing upwards residential properties are put in or a greater share of property taxes until the commercial property starts to make up its ground and starts to take on and that's really because commercial properties taxed at a different rate at a higher rate and so right now some place probably some properties have to make up that difference when it's not there and so that's being done by the residential properties at this point so what's proposed right now for two thousand and sixteen the two thousand and sixteen general fund budget proposed at six million one hundred twenty thousand six hundred thirty six dollars that's a change of one hundred eighty nine thousand one twenty six the bulk of that is an additional hundred thousand dollars for street maintenance an additional fifty thousand dollars for park improvements that's really what makes up the bulk of that increase and that's something that will king we're going to continue to work with the council and staff is going to continue to evaluate whether that's a sufficient number where that number needs to be could be less and not impact our ability to really meet those needs long term and short term as it relates to street and park improvements the levy right now is proposed two million seven hundred seventy thousand four hundred thirty nine dollars that's an increase of two hundred ninety nine thousand five hundred fifty four dollars again some of that's comprised of the street or the bulk of that's comprised of the street and the park improvement additional money of about one hundred fifty thousand dollars that was put into that and then as we do and try to do on a regular basis is really to evaluate some of the revenues so for example we had revenues coming into the general fund that's for st maintenance we took those revenues out and put them into the street maintenance fund because that's really where those those revenues need to reside also evaluate other revenue some of the other revenue streams a more recent historical trend they're not trending as high as they once were and so we made adjustments to that and so that's those additional revenues or those lost revenues if you will are being made up right at this point time in the context within the levee the debt levy for twenty thousand right now as proposed and we just did a refund in here not too long ago and so these numbers could be adjusted slightly so we're looking at just about an eight thousand dollar overall increase but in two thousand and sixteen we're actually looking at that number will increase more substantially as and fourteen because we'll have this twenty sixteenth street in utility project that will come online and that'll be that will be issued for that and that will then affect the overall levy that gets issued as a result of that so for two thousand and sixteen that number could grow and then every even  year if we continue on the current trend and current path of doing street improvement projects every even year that number will continue to grow until we reach a point that debt starts to fall off when new debt comes on the last two market value in the tax capacity these are the numbers that ultimately help determine tax rate those numbers are up and that's a good thing for north st paul let alone any community to see those numbers continue to go up from an expenditure breakdown just again to give you an idea of how the pie a slice from a general fun standpoint as is typical in most cities if not all cities is that public safety tends to be the biggest consumer if you will of the resources not just from the resource standpoint but just personnel that takes to drive some of those different departments and so you can see that police and fire and code enforcement comprise the majority of the budget at this point in time you can also see that our other big areas really street maintenance and that's really tied to that additional funding that was put into that to really accelerate some of the street maintenance work that's out there again there's also parks is also another big area and the central services was something that we instituted last year this is really building maintenance and our technology costs and those sorts of things that's kind of one location to really keep track of all of those expenses that are out there so those are really kind of the big the big categories and the rest of it really i would constitute as the other departments that are up there from finance to administration to city council community development those are really those services those customer service programs that we deliver and those are really the staff driven resources that we provide on a regular basis whether we're issuing building permits or people are coming in for land use applications or paying utility bills those sorts of things those are those day to day interaction that we have with us from a revenue standpoint as you can see and again is not as is typical property taxes make up the bulk of our revenues for the for north st paul we also do bring in money from the utilities to help cover some of our expenses and then we also do get about one point eight million dollars in local government aid of which just under one point three is included in the general fund the other five hundred thousand dollars if you will goes into an elegy a fund which is then earmarked for different projects so for example we've set aside for two thousand and fifteen as per council direction is about two hundred seventy four thousand dollars one hundred seventy four thousand which is going for st maintenance in one hundred thousand for park improvements and then you can see the other ones if you look at that the licenses fines permits intergovernmental revenue and some of the other things those don't really generate a lot of revenue as a fully developed community there's not a lot of opportunities to generate a lot of additional revenue from building permits in those types of things and so those are the areas that really kind of tend to stay fairly consistent from year to year as it relates to the revenues is a median valued property in north st paul so the median value property north st paul is about one hundred fifty seven thousand five hundred dollars so if you took all the properties in the community this is the one right dead center in the middle so this property would see a tax bill of just city only a in their overall tax bill of from four thirty nine or just under four forty to five ten now if the city actually did nothing and we kept the tax rate the same this property would still see an increase in its property taxes we would have gone from just under four forty to about four seventy two so if the city did nothing and kept the tax rate exactly the same for the current year that does not necessarily mean that people would see a decrease in property taxes it's possible but that would be based on what the ultimate value would be for their property and then the far right column i just broke this this down by the general operational levee so you can see the total levy on the top which is the city tax how much of that goes to general operations and how much of that goes to pay that back the debt that's issued by the city the other in addition to the general and the debt levy that the city issues we also issue e t h or a market value levies and so for this property owner for the year it's about fifty fifty two or fifty three dollars for that property owner for those three levies the market value levy pays back the bond on the city hall and the e t a nature a those calls to those two different entities to use for economic development purposes business attraction and housing and redevelopment as we talked a little bit earlier about the creation of those home loans and the student built home projects that we do the bottom one is a commercial property in the community again this is at the median value on this property actually the median value for a commercial properties in north st paul actually dropped a little bit  so this property owner even though all if they were at the median value for two thousand and fifteen and are at it again for two thousand and sixteen even though their value dropped they would still see a slight increase in their property taxes for the year and then again if the the rate remained the so one of the things that i actually like to do was have all these expenses on a monthly scale add up to the things that we do on a regular basis and it's good to kind of take a look at this so for this property that's valued at the median home value of one hundred fifty seven thousand five hundred dollars if you take a look at just the operations which would be three hundred seventy eight dollars for the year or thirty one dollars and fifty two cents per month if you took that and broke it down by month you're getting a pretty good deal for the services that are currently being provided and the services that are being rendered to you so for example even though police comprise a larger aspect of the budget or even fire you can see for eleven dollars and sixty six cents a month you're getting a full time police department for three dollars and thirty one cents are getting fire services code enforcement but also people that are responding in the event that there is an emergency you're getting your streets for four dollars and eighty nine cents a month and you're having high quality well maintained parks for just under two dollars a month and so i think it's good to take a look at that and i think a lot of times it's that the easiest thing to compare it to is really your cell phone bill so this is a i would just checked it out the other day what it's what's of horizon cell plan go for it it's roughly anywhere between thirty five to sixty dollars a month so for sixty dollars a month is what you pay for your cell phone bill for this property owner they're getting all these services for thirty one dollars and fifty two cents a month and i think that's oftentimes a good really good way of taking a look at those sorts of things to really help put it in perspective of the really good deal that people get for the services that the city or any city provides so people just kind of an idea of so that's the general fund here is just kind of a look at what the for the year so in the electric fan right now it's proposed to be about a five hundred twenty three thousand two hundred fifty four dollar increase water we're looking at a slight decrease for the year wastewater we're looking at a significant increase in i'll talk about that in a minute  the solid waste that's looking to go up so this is the garbage and recycling collection that's really tied to the contract that we have with their public services and in the fiber optic fund this is really at the maintenance of the fiber system that the city currently owns which is a public institutional system  used for public purposes and that the debt down that will be ultimately paid off in two thousand and sixteen and we're currently working working right now to kind of develop that business plan or work plan reza relates to the city's fiber system so some of the things that we're looking to do for twenty sixteen so some of the reasons why you see some of the increases on the other screen or no change really we're starting to look again next year for two thousand and sixteen at that street utility project and solves some of that within the electric fund as an example are the expenses tied to moving overhead lines underground and the in the expenses tied to just updating the system is that we're trying to do with every street utility project working going to be completing the installation of all the radio water radio read water meters so that's been a project that we instituted late in two thousand and fourteen we've completed just about all of those and hopefully by spring of two thousand and sixteen we will have replaced all of the water meters within the community with the radio read system which then can be accessed from city hall and then we don't have to send meter readers out to have to kind of read those meters individually but we're also going to be continue with the installation of the electric radio read meters that's kind of a five year project and i were currently about two year two or three years into that at this point we have a couple years left on that one of the things as it relates to the the waste well if you look back on here you can see the middle  waste water four hundred ninety one thousand nine hundred forty dollars increase when we did the mill eleventh avenue mill an overlay project one of the things that was included in that project initially was the replacement of the station that's currently there when we went out for bid on that project bid came back in much higher than the engineers estimate and so we rejected the bids and with the idea or the intent that we would do that project this year we did some work that moved the utility kind of out of the roadway so we can come in and do that without impacting the road surface the new road surface that was put down but that's the reason why this is a significant increase in that fund now what we've been talking about is that we would likely issue an bond for that which would be ultimately paid back by the by the rates but that'll be something rather than having to increase the budget so significantly we can increase it just based on whatever we have to pay back for whatever we borrow for that project trying to accelerate the senate terry sewer inspections in the maintenance of that work  public works director is looking at a variety of different things and options related to some of the areas that we have problems in to really make sure that those lines are open and stay open and prepare for him to support it increases in wholesale power that's one of the things that we're looking at the possibility of a three to five percent increase for that and that's the power we buy through and m p a which is the group that we're part of and that's where our power comes from that then distributed to the community of north st paul and then as i mentioned earlier to also developing that work plan related to the  city case and now where is it heading what's it going to look like what are the options that we have is it something that we can look at is a sit in selling it leasing it something that we need to take a look at doing with that and getting a better handle on that so we have a plan into the long term future with related to that system so some of the things as really relates to the future and i thought this was we had a really good conversation back in or at our council retreat about some of the challenges that we face on an annual basis and even some of the things that we're looking at long term and so a lot of this is really some of the stuff that staff has been working with the council and staff has been working internally to take a hard look at what are the long term needs of the community and start building budgets and start building projections that really kind of get us there and so that we we do have to do levy increases or do have to do rate increases that we can do them gradually over time rather than one big fall swoop at some point we have to do a significant increase to help pay for those so really plan for community reinvestment and the de issuance you know we're the plan is to do these major street reconstruction projects every even year so twenty sixteen twenty eight hundred twenty twenty and with that debt levy is going to increase every two years if we continue on that tract and at some point down the road will get to a point where will start to fall off as we issue new debt and that'll help us stabilize that levy which i have further down which is talking about at what point are we able to achieve a stability stabilize that levee we're also talking about large scale street maintenance projects every odd year at basically every year we're going to be the plan is to do some sort of street improvement work in the community of significance this isn't just the patching in those sorts of things that are done on an annual basis but kind of those bigger projects so that we get a longer life out of our roads which will help us save money over time and then we also have the facility maintenance and other investments that we have to have to take a look at as well and also contained with pursuit of diversification of the city's quote unquote portfolio and that's really kind of the business mix the mix of housing that we need in the community we're predominantly single family what are the other needs that we that we need we need more town homes we need more apartment buildings so really kind of taking a good look at making sure that we're diversifying all of our what we can offer to potential  families or businesses or businesses with their employees when they when they're looking for for a new community to come in to talk a little bit about i mentioned little bit about it are we able to achieve a point of levee stability that gets us to a point where we can don't have to do increases but we can find a ability where it can be stable that also allows us to address the long term needs what point and what's that level what does it look like balancing public involvement versus private investment and this this i thought was a really good conversation on the part of the city council is  know part of our role can be to help affect change and help move things forward whether that's acquiring property investing in a project whether it's through tax increment financing or other means and so at what point does that trigger and where does that come in place and where can we have impact and i think that's the aspect is work in the city of impact to help bring business in to help making sure that our neighborhoods are well preserved their property values stay stable in times when ecan when you enter in we all know the economy is cyclical so at some point when you get into another recession or you run into other uncertainties with the economy the more things that we can do to affect or impact change and help stabilize things the more we can weather those things long term mentioned working to preserve neighborhoods and property values and i think really what this ultimately all of this comes down to is what do we do or how do we identify what's going to attract young professionals and young families to move into the community i think there's been a lot of conversation and i know that our school new school superintendent has indicated no trying to you know preserve and stabilize the middle class within north st paul and i think that's an important thing every community gets old and so we want to be able to be sure that we have younger people that come in to kind of keep things going to keep things rolling and keep your st paul exciting vibrant that it's been for a number of years heard a lot of this already right so i maybe maybe i'll just kind of run through a couple of the images that i have up here just trying to get i think one of the aspects is really helping people understand how property taxes are generated is not necessarily an easy thing it's very complex so i try to give it kind of the real simple kind of once over really what this looks like and so every property has a value and so every year every two years the county assessor will set the value of a property and so again using that mean value home so this property is set at one hundred fifty seven thousand five hundred dollars in minnesota single family homes that are under five hundred thousand dollars are taxed at one percent so this is intended to represent one percent of this of this building and then for properties that are valued at less than four hundred thirteen thousand eight hundred dollars are eligible for what's called a market value exclusion that's basically what i term as more of a credit so rather than paying the full property tax on one thousand five hundred seventy five dollars which is your considered taxing capacity you're only paying property taxes on one thousand three hundred forty four dollars then what you need is the council needs to identify and set its calculate its budget and tax levies we talked earlier the tax levy for twenty six thousand that's proposed is two million seven hundred seventy thousand four hundred thirty nine dollars from that point then we have to calculate a tax rate the tax rate is what is multiplied against the value to come up with what the ultimately pay in taxes so once we determine the tax levy so this little pile of money here is intended to represent that tax levy divided by the total city taxing capacity so all the properties in the community that are added up to determine what that ultimate capacity is so if you saw one of the slides i had earlier that taxi no that was that's the total market value of the taxing capacity for more st paul is seven million eight hundred ninety eight thousand seven twenty one seat divided there's a few things that get taken out of and this is where some of the formula formula stuff comes into play in equations  those sorts of things so you divide the total basically divide your total tax levy by the total value of the community to ultimately get to a tax rate so for twenty sixteen what's what's been approved or what's been sent to the county is a tax rate around thirty seven nine hundred thirty seven percent so you take this number multiply it by this number and that's what you get in terms of city taxes and every every whether it's the county whether it's the school district all generally follow the same sort of thing and on your tax  statement a lot of times we do get a lot of calls because people see that there are tax statement and i'll see that number and people are maybe don't necessarily know that we're just one of several entities that are on that tax statement so one of the things to look at is that you know when you get your statements of find the city in this case city of north st paul which is line item seven on your ramsey county tax state and that will give you what your property taxes for the year and what that percentage is one of the things that sometimes it's easier to deal with actual dollars than percentages because percentages can look skewed so if you look back and we talked about some of these other things you know we're looking at really a seventy fifty you know anywhere between a thirty to forty to fifty to seventy dollar increase on terms of the sample properties that are out there a year which if somebody looks at the tax even might say you know ten fifteen percent increase from their perspective so that's really how property taxes are calculated kind of in a nutshell kind of in a basic way just to kind of help give people a little bit of an understanding take this and you compare taking a look at all the the some of the cities in ramsey county and where does north st paul fall in the context of what that city taxes and you look at other cities where st paul's really right about the middle just slightly above the middle seen anthony villages at the top end followed by maplewood new brighton mounds view roseville if you took a look at and i didn't put this together but if you took a look at properties or cities with populations between ten to fifteen thousand were still about in the middle in terms of that overall property tax and that was based on twenty fifth and for twenty six things out the last item i have over here is really tied to the commercial and residential just kind of giving you more of a range sample of here's one hundred thousand dollars property here's that meeting value property here's a property valued at three hundred thousand dollars just to give people an idea of what that ranges we can put this information up on the web site so people can access that as well and then here's a commercial property with the low end value of two hundred thousand the median value of the three fifty to six hundred and then a high value of a million dollars in the community in kind of give people an idea of what that looks like if you can see  here commercial properties are not eligible for that nor are homes as we mentioned before anything ultimately phases that so we can certainly make this information available to us on the web site again will people have the ability to kind of get an idea of what well one thing i was just going to point out to as i mentioned earlier commercial properties are taxed at one point five percent up to the one hundred to one hundred two percent for everything over and above that so that's where they pay a greater share of that overall property tax which is why you want you know redevelopment for north st paul is going to be very critical going forward because the more commercial value the less stress it places on the residential i believe they're taxed at a different rate one one point two five percent one point five percent as well right in the middle  that's a good question and that was actually one of the things that i was trying to prepare information and one of the things i was actually going to do with this was to color these different because when you start to take a look at every community has a different taxing capacity in market value and if you look at north st paul compared to white bear lake or maple water any of those they are you in the community and therefore they may set a levy the same as ours or greater but their tax rate can be less property or more value in the community that's going to share more of that cost in theory what you want is you want this the levy number to be further away from the total tax in capacity so the smaller this is in the bigger this is the lower the tax rate so that's one of the reasons why you could look at you know white bear lake for example in their tax rates like one thousand percent well they also far outpace us in terms of overall valuation in the community right  people would as a significantly higher market value than we have in the community x rated still higher and some of that's based on their councils made a concerted effort to make certain decisions as it relates to how they're going to spend money on things so there many variables related to this that just to look at this and say we're mid pack or were high or low really isn't sufficient without having an understanding that that one the total value of the community is a large driver of what that ultimately is so that that total market value in tax capacity the local decisions that the city councils make answer relates to how much they're going to pay for services  i don't have all the answers but that this would because they have a large tax base why it's higher in there because their tax rate is about forty six percent whereas to debian this is forty six percent  sixteen hours is just under thirty eight percent just based on some decisions that they've made budget budget wise maybe they're maybe they're putting more money into street improvements maybe they're putting more money into parks roseville number of years ago made the decision to rather than