Creating a Sustainable General Fund

The City is forecasting a $2 million gap each year for the next five years.

It’s always good to maintain some beginning balance funds in case of emergency expenditures. Additionally, the City does not receive tax revenue until November of the fiscal year, so we use the beginning fund balance to pay our bills until the tax revenue comes into the General Fund.

No. The City does collect money from the developers. This money is called system development charges. The collection of this money is regulated by the state and can only be collected for Transportation, Water, Sewer, Stormwater, and Parks. This money can only be used for the capital construction to expand these services. It can not be used for personnel or maintenance costs of these systems. Nor can it be used for general fund services.

The cuts proposed in Option 4 will sustain the general fund for the next five fiscal years.

Yes. The City looked at a bond for capital improvements. A capital bond would help, but not completely fix the general fund issue. Deferred capital expenditures are only about 25 percent of the shortfall the city is attempting to resolve. So why we could pay for that 25 percent with a capital bond, the other 75% is needed to come from a different solution.

State law allows a city to place a moratorium on construction and land development, but only for a limited period of time and under specific circumstances. A moratorium is only valid for 120 days and may be extended up to an additional 180 days. 

No. Compression occurs when a property’s taxes are over the measure 5 limits. For non-education taxes the limit is $10 per $1,000 of real market value. Today, the non-education taxes for properties in Dallas is $6.68. In order to reach compression, we would need to add $3.32 per $1,000 to the tax rates. The highest tax rate proposed is option 1, which adds $1.90 per $1,000 to the tax rates.  

Property taxes make up 43% of the General Fund revenues. 

First, the beginning fund balance has been inflated the past few years due to the infusion of the one time ARPA funding. As the ARPA funding is spent, this will quickly draw down the beginning fund balance to its normal level. The main cause of the decline over the next five years is the city's need to pay for deferred capital purchases and projects such as public safety vehicles, building maintenance, equipment maintenance and replacement.

Yes. The county’s public safety levy you voted on in May 2023 was for the public safety services provided by Polk County, including the Sheriff’s Office, the District Attorney and other county public safety services. The City’s proposed public safety levy would only support City public safety services.

The Polk County levy provided funding to Polk County for public safety services provided by the County, including the sheriff’s office, district attorney’s office and county court system. The proposed Dallas Public Safety levy proposes to provide funding directly to the Dallas Fire and EMS, and Dallas Police Departments.

The Public Safety Levy, if approved, is a 5-year levy. If the City chose to renew the levy, it would require another vote of the Dallas electorate in five years.

The Polk County levy taxes all properties in Polk County, including properties in the cities of Dallas, Monmouth, Independence, and Salem. The city of Dallas proposals only taxes properties inside the city limits of Dallas. Fewer properties means a higher tax rate to increase the same amount of revenue.

The City polled the community for a Parks and Recreation District with a tax rate of $1.65 per $1,000 of assessed value. Given the polling results, the Council has reduced the proposed tax rate of the Parks and Recreation District to $1.25 per $1,000 of assessed value. When the Parks and Recreation District is coupled with the Public Safety Fee increase, it is still a viable solution for the public to consider.

All City parks and recreation assets would be transferred to the district including the Dallas Aquatic Center, all City parks (including recreational amenities such as the skate park and pickleball courts), the Hunter Arboretum and the Rickreall Creek Trail System. Parks and recreation maintenance assets such as vehicles and tools would also transfer to the district. The district would administer and provide all aquatic and recreational programs. It would also manage the aquatic center and park shelter reservations.

The proposed parks and recreation district would include all properties within the Dallas School District, which includes properties outside of the city limits of Dallas. This allows for a smaller tax rate, as there are more properties paying

Dallas park and recreation amenities, such as the aquatic center, sports courts, and trails system are used by patrons who live outside the city limits, but inside the school district boundary. By using the school district boundary for the proposed park and recreation district, more of the users of the parks and recreation amenities will be paying property taxes for these services. 

This decision will be made between an agreement with the City Council and the Park and Recreation Board of Directors. 

The school district boundary is much larger than the Dallas City limits, including areas such as Rickreall, Pioneer and Ruben Boise Rd, and areas south of Dallas. 

The reductions in public safety staffing will limit our ability to respond to calls for service, putting at risk life and property. Less personnel also will result in employees getting burnt out, lowering morale, and hurting retention and recruitment for these departments.

The decision to make any cuts is difficult. The fact is deep that in order to reduce expenditures to match revenues, public safety cuts were necessary. To put it in perspective, the general fund revenues in the current fiscal year are roughly $13 million, and the expenditures in public safety are roughly $9 million. Cuts in other departments would result in additional services completely going away, as is proposed for the Aquatic Center.

The City Council would determine what to do with the building.

The reductions in services outlined in option 4 will reduce the livability in Dallas. The reduced livability will make it more difficult to recruit and retain businesses. Option 4 would negatively affect the City’s long term solution of increasing the commercial and industrial tax base of Dallas.

No. Reducing hours does not reduce the ongoing operational needs, such as heating the pools, chemical needs, etc. The savings in less personnel hours is offset by the reduced revenues in membership dues and daily rates.

That is the average assessed value of a home in Dallas today. Since taxes are calculated on the assessed value of a home, not the real market value, we use that value to calculate the possible cost of these options.

The real market value is the Assessor's determination of the real market value of your property. The assessed value is the value used to calculate your taxes. Assessed value is never more than your real market value and is typically significantly less than your real market value.

As allowed by Measure 50, cities, counties and special districts have asked their citizens to approve serial levies, such as the Polk County Public Safety Levy, or the Southwest Polk Fire Levy.

No. This fee is adopted by the council through an ordinance. An increase to the fee would also be adopted through a vote of the council.

The current fee was initially designed to pay for two firefighter/EMTs and two police officers. The proposed fee would pay for four of each of those positions.

Support local businesses! The more our citizens support the local businesses in town, the more likely they are to thrive and stay in business.

The City Council evaluates its general fund forecast annually, and will make a decision on levies and fees accordingly.

The urban renewal program helps the long term solution by enabling public investments into industrial properties to assist with site readiness. Tax abatement incentive programs such as the enterprise zone, waive property taxes for 3-5 years. However, in the long term the business provides more taxes than are currently available had the program not incentivized the initial or additional development to occur.

A franchise fee is a fee charged by the City and paid by a utility company. This charge allows the utility company to use the public right of way for the distribution of their utility services.

Urban Renewal is an economic development tool used by the City of Dallas to increase the city's tax base. This is done by economically revitalizing areas of blight through public investments that stimulate private development.

Urban renewal enables the city to make public investments into private properties, leveraging larger private investments than would otherwise likely be made. This grows the tax base of the city faster than if urban renewal did not exist.

The levies in options 1 and 3 would provide direct funding to public safety services. When looking at option 4, the reductions option, the City decided to include other general fund services, to reduce the impact to public safety cuts.

No, all of the options are to maintain current staffing levels and maintain our current buildings.

No. Residential development costs more in terms of general fund services than the taxes the development raises for the city. 

A capital project or purchase is an item or project that costs at least $10,000.

A master planned area, like the La Creole plan area, is a largely undeveloped area inside the city's urban growth boundary in which the city approves a conceptual development plan including proposed street layouts, utility infrastructure, and zoning of properties. 

Option 1 adds costs to property owners in city limits and removes costs to city bill payers. Option 2 adds costs (taxes) to property owners within the school district boundaries, which include all of Dallas city limits and some areas outside Dallas city limits. It also increases costs to all city bill payers. Option 3 adds costs to property owners in city limits and to city bill payers. Option 4 does not increase costs to any group.

No. The funds that were already distributed to municipalities are not affected by this law.

The Dallas Public Library is part of the Chemeketa Cooperative Regional Library Service, also known as CCRLS. This organization collects taxes and divides the tax revenues among the participating libraries in the system. 

Reducing services to lower the levy amount, means citizens would pay more for less services. The city believes this type of scenario would not be well supported. 

 No. The increases in the City bill are for water and storm water services. These are not General Fund services. 

Yes. The city has explored a few opportunities, including the Aquatic Center. Partners wishing to privatize the Aquatic Center, will only assume the operation, leaving the ongoing facility maintenance on the public dollar. This is not a cost effective solution. 

The study included several mitigation measures to improve the flooding issues along this drainageway. The City will work to implement these measures according to the study, using revenues generated from the stormwater fee collected on the City bill.

The City does not have a position at this time.The Council knows that each of the four immediate solutions will work. Each of these solutions have their pros and cons.The Council is seeking feedback from the public to help inform their decision, and has provided objective information to help the public make an informed decision.