Last night’s meeting included the Fiscal Year 2021 Tax Classification Hearing, which took up a large chunk of the meeting. Each year, the Board of Assessors value the property across Salem in four broad categories: residential, commercial, industrial, and personal property. Their assessment is reviewed and approved by the state Department of Revenue to ensure that the Board is not over- or under-valuing properties. The City Council has no control over modifying the assessed value from which the tax rate is factored. There are a few important things to note when it comes to the tax increase: first, the assessments are roughly one-year to 18 months behind market rate. Second, the city sets aside a portion of funding to offset expenses to reduce the burden on taxpayers. And finally, in Salem, the residents carry the lion’s share of the tax burden (~80%) and cities with higher a commercial base tend to have lower residential property tax.
The council voted on the Assessors’ recommendation to set the residential factor at 84.9947 and split the tax rate with Commercial, Industrial, Personal Property (CIP) at 1.7. This determines the increase in your property tax, which again this year has been under the maximum allowed by state law. The council voted to accept the recommendation, and approved this rate and split: 8 in favor, 3 opposed (Councilors Dibble, Dominguez, and Flynn)
The city has the opportunity to take out a Signature Parks Improvement Bond for $16M, which will allow the six signature parks projects to advance on a timetable that will enable them to be completed by 2026, Salem’s 400th anniversary. There was some question about the legality of the Administration and Finance (A&F) Committee meeting under open meeting law, so the matter was referred back to A&F, where it will be reviewed briefly and concurrently to or immediately adjacent to a special city council special meeting for a full vote. Councilor Turiel will be setting this up imminently, so if you’re interested in the outcome, pencil in next Thursday.
There were a ton of financial matters that had to be cleared up for year-end housekeeping, and most were voted without commentary or incident, but there was some discussion around a $30K expenditure for contracting a service to conduct the Police Chief assessment. Dibble expressed concern with spending this kind of money on using a service, and felt that this could be done by the city, saving money. Dominguez agreed, and Flynn weighed in questioning the need to go outside of the department at all and went “on the record” as saying promotion should be from within Salem ranks. First, there is a civil service component to the hiring process that is still a bit murky. Civil service exams have been subject to a number of court challenges due to charges of bias resulting in discriminatory effects. This is a very fluid issue and better, fairer and more just exam processes are expected, but I digress…the point is, the process is open as a result, so simply promoting from within is not an option. Mayor Driscoll explained that at this level (police or fire chief), there are qualities and qualifications that the applicant must have in addition to high test scores on an exam. This service has specific experience reviewing candidates for leadership, grace under pressure, knowledge of policy, best practice, procedure, etc. Chief of police is a critical role in the community, and they are currently in high-demand. The city has used this service for the past several appointments (Paul Tucker, years ago and Mary Butler). The council voted to approve the expense, with only Dibble voting against.
The council voted unanimously to update the city’s hazard mitigation plan.
The A&F and Ordinances, Licenses and Legal Affairs (OLLA) committees carried matters forward to 2021. Any matters in committee not carried forward are essentially dead and will have to be re-introduced.
And finally, a year-end adieu. None of these councilors could have anticipated their need to lead the city through a global pandemic. There were several new councilors, who were not only learning a new job, but doing so under duress. We (the LWV) are grateful to all of you for your service to the community. Typically this would close the 2020 council business, but recall, we have on last special meeting dedicated to the signature parks bond.
Respectfully submitted, Jen Lynch