Manitowoc Mayor Justin Nickels
Manitowoc Mayor Justin Nickels presented his 2022 Executive Budget to the Common Council last (Monday) night.
The $65 million 400-page spending plan includes decreasing the city’s debt for a 13th straight year plus a decrease in the property tax rate.
“I’m planning a negative 1.52% decrease so the owner of a $100,000 dollar home would pay about $826 in city property taxes in 2022. That is based off of your home assessed value so if your assessed value changed in the latest revaluation that number might change.”
Nickels says one of his top priorities was to invest in the 350 city employees who in his words “work hard to keep the city functioning on all cylinders.”
“Non-represented employees are going to see about a 1.75 to 1.79% cost of living adjustment. We do also have a performance-based system where employees who are successful or exceed expectations can receive a little higher than that. That’s about a $275,000 increase. Our Police Union has a contract for two percent raises. That’s about a $111,000 increase. Our Fire Union if we approve the new contract which we are at that point will be about a $113,000 increase and also we have a Transit Union for about a $14,000 increase based on their contract.”
Other highlights include approximately $3.7 million in road infrastructure projects, about $3.5 million to complete Phase One of the River Point District, nearly $1.8 million for Manitowoc Public Library, $650,000 for parks, $100,000 for Harbor upgrades, and $50,000 in the Forestry Budget to deal with Emerald Ash Borer and replanting of trees.
The Mayor adds that plenty of sacrifices were made to get to this point.
“We were $76 million in debt in 2009. We had $16,000 in the undesignated reserves. Our City budget was hurting and we had to make some difficult decisions. We’re at a point now where we can put money back into the services we provide our citizens and not ask them not to pay a lot more.”
The Finance Committee will begin dissecting the budget over the next several weeks with a Public hearing and planned passage scheduled for November 15th.
