Following discussion at last week’s regular Wright City Board of Aldermen meeting, and a special meeting Monday, Aug. 31, the board approved a 2026 tax rate of $0.8665 per $100 of assessed valuation.
The new rate is an increase over last year of $0.0239 per $100 of assessed valuation. Debate among the aldermen and comments from the public prior to approval of the tax rate touched on topics ranging from the still unclear fiscal impact of the 2025 Senate Bill 3 tax freeze, to past tax rates that have been higher than this year’s, to dangers of deficit spending.
Noting that last year’s tax rate was $0.8426 per $100 of assessed valuation, Alderwoman Karey Owens called the increase “pretty negligible” for 2026.
“I know we have kept taxes flat or even lowered for the past five years. I looked back and in 2022 it was $0.9009, so even with a little bitty bump, we’re still lower than we were,” Owens said at the Aug. 27 meeting.
While the vote on the tax rate was ultimately unanimous, however, some of the aldermen made known their reluctance to approve the increase.
“I can only imagine what our residents are going through. I mean, we’re strapped as a city, and I get it,” Alderman Don Andrews said at last week’s meeting.
“I can only relate to the way that I’m strapped as a household myself, how I can barely pay my electric bill a month, and I’m way better off than a lot of our residents. How I can barely pay a lot of the bills that I get, and now we’re going to raise their taxes? I mean, I don’t know the math, maybe we’re only talking $60 a house a year, I don’t know, but anything’s too much.”
Similarly, Alderman Russ Lyons noted at Monday’s meeting that many Wright City residents live on fixed incomes.
The specific area where the city tax rate is increasing is in its debt service levy, and the added revenue will go toward the city’s $540,914 bond payment for next year.
Prior to the vote at the Aug. 31 special meeting, Andrews asked Owens, who he called the city’s “budget queen” to explain “for clarity and transparency purposes,” why the city was increasing its property tax to cover the bond payment, when revenue from a 1 percent sales tax approved in 2023 was set aside to go toward the bond payments.
“When we look at Prop R, which was the 1 percent sales tax, and we guaranteed half of it to go to the roads funds, part of that sales tax was always going to help pay down this bond, but we knew it wouldn’t be the total sum, right, so we were pulling the rest out of gen(eral) rev(enue) and such,” Owens said.
Part of the sales tax revenue also goes to public works projects, for “not everyday but those kind of more common street repairs that happen within subdivisions,” she added, “and then we had been pulling money bulk to help offset what the sales tax didn’t cover for this bond.”
A problem the city now faces “is that sales tax is coming in a little soft this year,” Owens said “so, you know, we can only use what’s happened in the past to predict the future.”
She added that the city is unsure what impact last year’s SB-3 legislation will have on revenue.
The legislation, which is now Missouri statute, froze property taxes at 2024 rates for some, but not all Missouri residents. In theory, Warren County residents are among those the freeze applies to. There are exemptions from the freeze, however, such as if people move or make improvements to their property, and it is far from clear how the law will be applied in practical terms.
“So the big question mark for us is, what is the impact of SB-3? And we have reached out to the county and asked them for guidance, and their answer is they don’t know,” Mayor Michelle Heiliger said at last week’s meeting.
“So we’re in a weird situation this year, because we have no idea how it’s going to impact our budget as we go in to plan for 2027.”
Prior to voting on the tax rate, Alderwoman Kim Arbuthnot noted that the city’s new debt service tax levy of $0.1728 per $100 of assessed valuation is less than what the state would allow it to charge. In response to a question from Arbuthnot, City Clerk Abbie Ogborn said the city’s debt service tax levy capacity was $0.9963.
“So the city voluntarily waives $0.7 and some change,” Ogborn said.
In discussing possible places to cut the budget, Owens noted that the Wright City Police Department accounts for 63 percent of the city budget. One of the only ways the city could see significant savings would be to let a police officer go, Owens and Heiliger both said, and no one on the board expressed any interest in doing so.
“We have very distinct costs that we have no conversation about,” Heiliger said. “We have to pay work comp, we have to pay insurance, we have to meet payroll, we have to meet our utility bills, we have to pay our bond payments. Those costs are never going to change no matter how much money we have or do not have.”
Heiliger and Owens also each noted that when they first joined the Board of Aldermen, the city had been deficit spending for several years.
“This board has promised our public we would not do that again,” Heiliger said at last week’s meeting.
Though city officials said the local government faced limited options when it came to its tax rate, not everyone was convinced the increase was necessary.
Resident Larry Zuhone asked at the Aug. 31 meeting what would happen if SB-3 didn’t end up having a significant impact on city tax revenue.
Alderman Andrews, who initially suggested last week that the city should “eat this for one year, just to see what SB-3 is going to do,” and not raise taxes, before coming around to voting in favor of the increased rate this week, said he would support cutting taxes whenever the opportunity arises to do so in a fiscally responsible way.
“The thing is, is that if we implement this tax today — I know this is hard to hear because no government does it, right? Or they always say they’ll do it,” Andrews said.
“But I think we’ve proven we will do what we say we’re going to do, and that is, if next year comes around, next August, if we have the ability to roll it back, we’ll do that.”
