HEART OF STEELE

I walked into last week’s City of Owatonna Truth in Taxation hearing with high expectations.

If you’re unfamiliar, these hearings give citizens an opportunity to talk directly with officials about the city budget and, perhaps more importantly, about their property taxes. To me, this is the heart of local government, the place where people and their elected officials can come together and talk about how much it really costs to live in a safe place with clean water and proper sewage disposal and well-maintained streets and a thriving economy.

Owatonna officials had in September proposed a tax levy increase of 9.6%. I’d heard grumblings over the last couple of months; I expected fireworks at the public hearing.

To their credit, city staff and officials truly sharpened their pencils in October and November and made significant reductions. Maybe word got out, because only four people spoke during the Tuesday public hearing, and only one of those four talked about the city budget.

To be fair, the others mentioned the budget, but in the context of whether certain city employees are doing their jobs well.

The discussion, bottom line, was about feuding neighbors and code enforcement.

Without getting into specifics, one speaker felt that city codes were not being enforced. The on-going dispute sounded frustrating. This person reported being shuffled from one city department to another and never getting a satisfactory resolution.

Another speaker talked about the opposite side of that coin: having a neighbor who frequently calls code enforcement for the smallest of issues.

What does all that have to do with property taxes? In my opinion, plenty. Code enforcement is about where people live. It’s about the quiet enjoyment of their home and neighborhood and can even affect property values.

To their credit, officials took those concerns seriously. City administrator Kris Busse offered to meet with the homeowner who felt they’d gotten the run-around.

So, while there wasn’t any real drama at last week’s hearing, officials showed the heart of what it means to work in local government and what all those tax dollars really represent: service.