Faced with peaking debt payments and some budget unknowns, the Tracy City Council on Monday approved a fluid preliminary levy of 10%, with the expectation of lowering that number when the final levy and budget are set in December. The certified preliminary property tax levy is $1,468,376.
“That number can come down, and we anticipate that it actually will come down,” said Tracy City Administrator Erik Hansen. “We wanted to give (the council) some flexibility. We plan on lowering it; we just don’t know all the details yet on some of the employee costs.”
Hansen said 2023 is the first of a three-year cycle that will bring with it some serious challenges.
“It’s kind of a triple whammy to a certain extent,” he said. “One is our debt payments in 2023, ’24 and ’25 are going to start to peak … our first payment for our street project is due in 2023; what that means is we’re going to have to start paying back all that money that we borrowed for the street projects.”
For more on this story, see this week’s paper!