The Pulaski County Council passed an ordinance Monday that could allow property taxes to increase by “thawing” the county’s levy freeze. But one council member pointed out that another measure to balance the county’s tax structure had already been agreed upon but never been implemented.
“Hey, whatever happened to the supplemental homestead credit?” Mike Tiede asked. “We voted on that and that was supposed to be taken off and transferred and that would end up taking the income tax down, and property tax would go up a little bit.”
Auditor Laura Wheeler explained that the credit was still in place because the proper notice apparently hadn’t been given when council members tried to remove it. “We needed to have an ordinance,” she said. “It needed to be published prior to approving. And so you couldn’t just have a public meeting and vote on it. You had to have everything in place, and we did not have everything in place.”
She said she’s still working on getting the credit taken off, but the council has until October to do that, while the decision on thawing the levy freeze had to be made by the end of the month to impact next year’s budget. In the end, Tiede was one of two council members to vote against the levy freeze thaw.
