Mat-Su Borough Assembly approves 2019 budget

PALMER — The Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assembly adopted its budget Thursday night, reducing slightly the Areawide mill rate to 10.331. With their 18 amendments, Assembly Members supported education funding, crime prevention, transportation, and a new library, among other efforts.

Eleven new positions are added with eight of those funded by reducing expenditures such as replacing on-call positions with a full-time position. The list of positions is below.

Last year’s Areawide mill rate was 10.332. The Areawide mill rate is the rate of property tax on all areas within and outside cities. 1 mill is equal to $1 in taxes per $1,000 in taxable value. The Non Areawide mill rate is set at 0.548. The Non Areawide taxes are only for services provided outside the cities such as Animal Care and libraries.

Significant changes occurred at a meeting before deliberations when the Assembly installed a new tax cap of 10.5 mills. This means that the Assembly must adopt a mill rate at or below 10.5 mills until 2023. Under the new cap, Areawide taxes can only increase about $45 total on a $250,000 home over five years or about a 1.6 % increase over five years. The Assembly, however, last night chose to set a mill rate lower than that cap.

Earlier, the Assembly also allocated 6.3 mills of the Areawide property tax revenue to education operating costs or 60 percent. This works out to a $2.5 million increase in funding over last year. The Borough also pays for the debt for construction costs on new schools. Together, operations and construction debt for schools make up 70 percent of Areawide property taxes.

A budget amendment also allowed the District to retain, this year only, $250,000 of its unassigned fund balance or left over funds.