CLEAR LAKE — The Clear Lake City Council last night held their public hearing on the proposed maximum tax levy for the Fiscal Year 2026 budget and then set the date for the public hearing on adopting the budget for later this month.
Acting City Administrator Jacob Widman says the proposed tax rate for the next fiscal year’s budget is proposed to remain steady at $9.85 per $1000 taxable valuation.
As is the case with other cities and counties throughout north-central Iowa, property owners last month received notices showing that their property tax rates would see a double-digit increase, when in a majority of the cases locally that’s not the case. The state-mandated form bases that information on 10% increases in property valuations, which in most cases is false information. Widman says most property valuation increases in Clear Lake were around 1%. “If you look at it and you use that 1% increase that we saw citywide on a $200,000 valuation, the current year property taxes just for the city that you would have paid was $878, and for the proposed budget it would be $909. So it would be a $31 increase that you would be seeing.”
Widman says the state mandated mailing is very confusing to taxpayers. “It’s not a true representation. I know the state, when they original\ly had done it, they hadn’t put any growth into that calculation, and so they were ‘we’re just going to throw a 10% on there’. Well 10% is just an arbitrary number, it’s not a true picture. They went from one way to another way, it’s just not helpful.”
The council set April 15th at 5:30 PM as the date for the public hearing and final approval of the Fiscal Year 2026 budget.
