Absolutely. They could label it a "Loyalty Tax" or some such BS.
Posted on 01/17/2024 1:59:46 PM PST by Steven Scharf
“The error is significant”: South Portland Faces $4 Million Budget Shortfall After Mistakenly Failing to Increase Property Taxes Enough Edward Tomic
The City of South Portland is working to close a $4 million shortfall in their current fiscal year budget they identified earlier this month — a gap the city attributes to mistakenly not taxing residents enough to support the City Council-approved budget.
According to the city, South Portland’s current mill rate is $14.14, meaning property owners must pay $14.14 out of every $1,000 of their property’s assessed value. But it should have been raised to $14.69 this past summer following the approval of the current fiscal year’s budget by the City Council.
That increased tax rate would have resulted in the average South Portland property owner paying an additional $163 in taxes, which the city says would have fully funded this fiscal year’s budget — if it had not been “mistakenly not billed.”
“This error is significant, and we want to be transparent with the public and own up to this mistake,” said South Portland City Manager Scott Morelli in a Wednesday press release. “Fortunately, the City has capable problem-solvers in our Finance and other departments who have responded quickly to help resolve the issue and prevent it from repeating.”
Opting not to send higher tax bills to make up the shortfall, the city’s Finance team reviewed its options for non-tax revenues anticipated this year, looking to identify revenues streams which may “come in higher than anticipated,” including grants and reserve funds.
City department heads were also asked to review their budgets in order to identify and defer non-critical spending.
“While staff is confident that this process will be successful, it is possible that the City may need to utilize some amount of fund balance to finish out the year,” the city’s press release reads.
According the city, the reason why property taxes were not raised in accordance with the city’s budgetary needs was due to the city double counting certain reimbursements from the state, leading the city to overestimate revenues by $4 million and therefore to assume that much less in property taxes needed to be collected.
“This is of course a very unfortunate thing to have happened,” said South Portland Finance Director Ellen Sanborn. “We have put additional checks and balances in place so that something like this is very unlikely to happen in the future.”
The tax revenue that was mistakenly not collected for this year’s budget will be a topic of conversation for next fiscal year’s budget, covering July 1, 2024 through June 30, 2025.
The South Portland City manager and School Department will present their proposed budgets at the April 2, 2024 City Council meeting.
“South Portland is proud of its strong fiscal standing and remains one of only two communities in Maine to receive the highest bond ratings from both Moody’s and S&P, two leading global credit rating firms,” the city stated Wednesday.
South Portland Finance Director Ellen Sanborn use to work for the City of Portland as our Asst Finance Director and Finance Director. During that time period she told me I could not understand the minutia a city budget as I do not have a degree in municipal Finance. She has bounced around several governmental entities over the years.
She certainly saved the taxpayers of South Portland a boat load of money this year. Next year's budget is going to be a mess.
Maybe they should sue Antifa and BLM for the damage they caused.
This is South Portland. Those two entities have not done anything there.
Never did it occur to them to cut back in each department
It just couldn’t be because they wasted money. It just couldn’t.
The solution is NEVER spend less!
Portland MAINE.
Remember the Maine!
According to https://govsalaries.com/salaries/ME/city-of-portland, the highest 10% of Portland city employees have salaries ranging from $94K to $183K. Maybe the residents of Portland should know that before their property taxes go up again handle the budget deficit.
Learn to read. This is SOUTH Portland Maine.
“Never did it occur to them to cut back in each department”
Government is like a malignancy. It grows until it kills the host. Just look at all the places government is slowly killing, i.e. the population moving out and the deficits growing ever larger.
Double sales tax and state taxes. Be a true Democrat!
Double sales tax and state taxes. Be a true Democrat!
Another clueless commenter. Sales and state taxes have nothing to do with this.
Their mistake is spending too much, not taxing too little.
Headline that you’ll never see: “South Portland Faces $4 Million Budget Shortfall after Spending Too Much.”
The rest of us are not privy to your local color. In my neck of the woods cities and counties often have their own sales taxes. The posted article does not note what state (I think this is ME) nor does it mention local sales taxes are not allowed.
And we believe the excuse for this...why?
Without an outside audit, how do taxpayers know that some public employee/s didn’t make off with that amount of money?
Spent too much?
Yes-Clueless.
Since early 2020, South Portland has operated as a de facto refugee camp thanks to a confluence of poorly crafted federal, state, and local policies. Loose federal immigration laws and Maine’s welfare rules have made Maine an attractive destination for people who enter the country illegally, or who come seeking asylum, including two large populations that arrived in 2020 from sub-Saharan Africa and Haiti.
Under the current proposals, the hotels and motels in South Portland that are currently hosting large migrant populations will be prevented from doing so in the future. Instead, the city is looking for build, or have built, a number of shelters to house the unhoused. The council is also considering providing a city-owned building to a non-profit for it to become a shelter.
https://www.themainewire.com/2023/01/south-portland-city-council-reckons-refugee-homelessness-crisis/
Absolutely. They could label it a "Loyalty Tax" or some such BS.
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