Bella Vista Springs Tax On Residents

It’s no great surprise the city of Bella Vista, which is all of 5 years old, needs additional tax revenue to conduct the business typical of municipal operations.

The city remains in its infancy, having spent most of its life as an unincorporated village operated by a property owners’ association. When voters went to the polls in 2007 and created the city of Bella Vista, some mistakenly thought all contentious issues were over.

But cities cost money.

The city’s millage was

set at 1.5 mills after

incorporation. The City

Council has authority to

assess up to 5 mills on

its own, without a public

vote.

That’s exactly what

happened Oct. 29.

Alderman votedto increase the property tax rate for Bella Vista property owners to 2.5 mills. Mayor Frank Anderson anticipated the increase will provide another $460,000 annually.

“This will be the first year of (the city’s) existence where it appears, based on expenditures to date and anticipated expenditures in October, November and December, that the city comes very close to spending every dollar we received in revenue,” Anderson said prior to the Oct. 29 meeting.

The decision upset some people. The mayor and city council did themselves no favors by the way they conducted this important piece of public business.

It was, by all accounts, a last-minute action that left some residents surprised. There was little advance warning. Cities have to communicate to the county their millage rates by Oct. 30 so the Benton County Quorum Court can go through the formal process of adopting them for the approaching tax year. So if the increase was going to happen, it had to happen that night.

Alderman Jerry Snow, the only alderman to oppose the millage, was right to cry foul about having only one night to decide. The millage decision has to happen every year by the end of October, so there should have been more opportunity in the last few weeks to discuss the matter. Residents are right to complain about how this was handled.

As to the need for the money, however, one can hardly argue the case. The people in charge are no doubt realizing Bella Vista doesn’t have much of a tax base. The basic ways a city can get more revenue to meet the demand for services is to expand the tax base so more people or businesses are paying the taxes, or to increase the tax rate so that existing people or businesses pay more.

Bella Vista continues its struggle with identity.

Is it going to be a full-fledged city that develops its own tax base or a small, bedroom-community where most businesses and retailers are in neighboring communities? Bella Vista’s core challenge is there’s no consensus about what kind of community its residents want it to be.

Take, for example, Tuesday’s election on rezoning land slated to become a Walmart Neighborhood Market. The City Council approved the rezoning, then some residents successfully got the question onto the ballot. There’s been a strong fight against the rezoning by those who want Bella Vista to stay the way it is.

But a vote against Walmart certainly confl icts with the idea of creating revenue by expanding the tax base.

It’s important to remember incorporation changed the mechanism for developing solutions to the city’s challenges. It didn’t solve every issue. Figuring out what kind of community Bella Vista will be is going to take some time and some give and take.

And it won’t be resolved by springing last-minute tax decisions on residents.

Opinion, Pages 5 on 11/07/2012

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