At the recent Monmouth City Council meeting, the 2025 tax levy was presented, which is the beginning point for next year’s budget. City Administrator Lew Steinbrecher informs there is a significant increase in EAV and most property owners in the community will pay less on their property tax for the City’s portion of their Real Estate Tax bills:
“Ten years ago, the City used the property tax rebate economic incentive that is part of the enterprise zone to bring Cloverleaf to town, that ten-year tax abatement has now expired. We are going to see about a ten percent increase in our EAV next year; going from $92 million up to $102 million. This is the significant advantage of having these economic incentives available, so now we are going to be able to capture that nine-to-ten-million-dollar growth in EAV,” states Steinbrecher.
“The levy is going to be $3.048 million for next year. Because of the growth in the EAV, we are actually projecting that our tax rate is going to fall from about $3.00 down to $2.98. That is going to mean that most property owners in the community are going to be paying less property tax on the City’s portion of their real estate tax bills next year,” Steinbrecher adds.
Nearly seventy-four percent of the collected property taxes in the City of Monmouth is used to make contributions to the police and fire pensions, which is a mandated cost to the City. With the increased EAV in the 2025 tax levy, City Administrator Lew Steinbrecher reports additional dollars will be allocated for the pension funds:
“We are going to be allocating additional dollars, using that EAV growth to help support those two pension funds. About $450,000 of it will go to help pay for debt services next year and only $349,000 of that $3.048 million will actually be used to support municipal services. That is important to note because the property tax actually supports less than three percent of the cost of municipal services from fire, police, public works, and city administration. People should understand that a vast majority of property taxes go to support pensions,” shares Steinbrecher.
The fiscal year for the City of Monmouth begins May 1st annually, meaning this 2025 tax levy will cover May 1 of 2026 to April 30th of 2027.
