Monday evening's city council meeting featured an in-depth finance report going over a number of different tax revenues for the city of Minot, how they've fluctuated over the years, and how they could be impacted by upcoming changes. This weaves in well with the conversations we've been having lately on the issue as a whole here at The Dakotan, so I felt this issue deserved a deeper dive.
The report noted strong sales tax collections continuing from 2024 into early 2025. They as a whole continue a steady upward trend, however, month to month fluctuations make predicting future revenue challenging. Finance Director David Lakefield explained, "This shows the volatility of sales tax collections throughout the year. It's hard to really come up with any real consensus or draw some type of projections out of these numbers."
Property tax revenue's share of the city's budget have steadily dropped from about 18% in 2021 to just over 10% expected by 2025. The bulk of property tax funds support public safety, with personnel costs consuming over 90%, limiting resources for other city services. This moved the conversation onto Mill rates and revenue collected from property taxes over the last decade or so. The mill rate stayed fairly consistent for the first few years after the flood at around 80, followed by a spike in 2018/19 bringing the rate over 120 before falling below 100 for this year. To look at it more recently, from 2018-2025 there was an annual mill rate decrease of 7.8%
This leads to the revenue side of it. With higher oil boom sales tax revenues, property tax revenues were lighter, sitting just under $10 million immediately post flood. As with the mill rate, revenues have steadily increased over the past decade, ballooning to over $25 million in 2023 and 2024, before likely dipping down this year. So, between 2018-2025 it has had an annual increase in dollars of 8.2%. Wrapping it all together leaves with a net annual increase of 1.4%.
Discussion also included concerns regarding proposed state legislation on property tax levy caps. Depending on the baseline year selected, these caps could limit annual revenue increases for Minot between roughly $950,000 and $5.5 million, significantly restricting financial flexibility. It just shows the importance of implementing the property tax relief that is circulating in the state legislature. Lakefield emphasized, "This is going to become real critical for us as we try to plan longer term."
The council also reviewed the Capital Improvement Plan (CIP), highlighting nearly $940 million in proposed infrastructure projects needing around $300 million in local funding, primarily focused on flood protection. They have been ranked internally in accordance of importance and necessity to be completed.
You can view the presentation in full on the agenda or watch it here as presented by Finance Director David Lakefield
