About property taxes | Sumner Mayor Update

On Tuesday evening, I gave an update to the Pierce County Council. As I reviewed what's happening in Sumner, I noticed again that a lot of great things are going on here. Things like new businesses opening downtown, a new Y, more companies moving into our industrial area which means more jobs.

The following is written by Sumner Mayor Dave Enslow:

On Tuesday evening, I gave an update to the Pierce County Council. As I reviewed what’s happening in Sumner, I noticed again that a lot of great things are going on here. Things like new businesses opening downtown, a new Y, more companies moving into our industrial area which means more jobs. But I also noted that demand for services–roads, parks, crime prevention, emergency response–continues to grow and strain our budget.

For many years now, Sumner has held a special distinction of having one of the lowest city rate in the State for property taxes. The Council and I have worked hard to keep taxes low and to find ways to do more with less. Finding ways to provide better or the same services for less cost has been a mantra around City Hall for many years now, and we have been quite successful. While other cities raised utility taxes on water and sewer services, we haven’t touched them sinceI was in the army. We’ve held steady on property taxes, even though Initiative 747 passed in 2001meant we couldn’t even keep up with inflation. And we’ve resisted things like business & occupation (B&O) tax or other increases that other cities have adopted.

At the same time, we have found ways to reduce costs through partnerships, reorganization, utilizing technology, or finding efficiencies without sacrificing service. Our staff is second to none in helping us stretch the dollars while providing great service to our community. But when we can’t even keep up with inflation, we can only do this for so long before we must make difficult decisions. That’s the point we’re at now. The golf course has strained our budget for twenty years and the delay of the sale has meant we are forced to find ways to increase revenue. The Council spent most of their meetings the past September and October reviewing options, and came to the decision to tap into property tax capacity in order to support the services valued by you, our citizens.

What does it mean? Because the City receives only 4% of your property tax (most of your property tax goes to schools, the fire department, state and county government), this change will minimally affect the total amount that you pay. Yet, it will make a big impact: we’ll be able to chip-seal roads, work on sidewalks, and not have to discuss taxes at least through 2020 (thank goodness). In fact, the Council made it clear that when the golf course sale closes, they will consider lowering the tax rate.

And in case you’re curious, we’re still among the lowest city property tax rates in the State. This is one instance, where we’re quite happy to not keep up with our neighbors!