Last year the Council formed a Citizens Bond Committee to evaluate the need for future capital improvement bonds for the City. These would be General Obligation bonds which can only be authorized by the voting public. The last time the citizens voted on a bond authorization was 2007. The Citizens Bond Committee made several recommendations to council requesting additional bond authority from the public at the November 3, 2020 election, including the following:
Department Amount Purpose
Land Fill $9.9 million Expand the land fill to meet demand for next 25+ years and beyond
Parks & Recreation $87.2 million Planning, constructing, adding to and renovating existing Parks and Rec facilities
Flood Control $9.3 million Storm Drain improvements on many of our main City roads
Streets $81.5 million Construct and reconstruct major and local streets, highways and bridges in the city
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Total $187.9 million
These bond authorizations will help meet the needs of city capital improvement projects over the next 10 years and are all in areas that citizens want to see improved. The City Council unanimously approved referral of the bond questions to the ballot.
Monies raised from these bonds can only be used for the capital improvement projects as defined on the ballot. Money collected from the city secondary property tax is used to pay the bonds off.
As was explained two weeks ago in this newsletter, the city Council policy is to keep your secondary property tax levy at the same level. This means that as the city issues bonds to pay for new capital projects, the tax levy will remain the same. The yearly bond payments are kept at levels which keep overall tax levies at or below prior years.
Over the past several years, Glendale tax rate levies have been reduced each year because overall property values have gone up. If the same tax rate from the prior year were accessed, property taxes would go up in proportion to the increase in property values. However, due to current council policy, the rate has been lowered each year to ensure the same amount of taxes are collected as the prior year. The only growth in property taxes comes from newly developed properties which are added to the tax rolls. Each individual property's taxes may fluctuate based on increases in property values above the average due to such things as major improvements, but the amount of revenue the city collects remains about the same every year.
If you have any questions about your city of Glendale property taxes, feel free to reach out to my office. Stay tuned for additional discussions about the November 3, 2020 bond authorization.
