Seward County property owners reviewing the tax statements in last week’s mail may notice something new in the information.
For the first time, the statements include a message about how much of their property taxes go toward public safety expenditures.
All county taxpayers will see the percentage of the county’s tax revenue designated for public safety uses based on their own property values. Seward County’s portion of “county general” fund taxes reported for public safety is 45.8% of the total tax, which includes expenses like the sheriff’s department, detention center, county attorney and public defender.
State statute indicates public safety services include crime prevention, offender detention, and firefighter, police, medical, ambulance or other emergency services.
The total current tax by subdivision is listed in the upper left box on the tax statement, which also includes last year’s tax levels.
An additional listing in the “messages” box on the statement is the portion of property taxes to be paid for city or village services, also based on the appropriate individual property values.
The public safety expenses are self-reported by the political subdivisions based on a questionnaire. But some cities and villages have local option sales taxes that also add to the revenues supporting their programs.
For Seward, that meant that the city reported 100% of its general fund property tax revenue supporting public safety.
Seward City Administrator Greg Butcher said reporting 100% seemed the best option based on the survey question received.
“We use more money for public safety than we request in property taxes,” Butcher said.
He noted that for the Seward Police Department and the Seward Volunteer Fire Department, the city’s expenditures are supplemented by voter-approved sales tax revenues.
Seward County Treasurer Jacob Zlatkovsky said county treasurers worked with state auditors, the League of Municipalities and the Nebraska Association of County Officials to be able to survey taxing entities about their budgets that were finalized earlier this fall and have the information for the December statements.
Nebraska lawmakers passed LB 647 last year requiring the public safety information to be included on tax statements for each political subdivision.
District 24 Sen. Jana Hughes said the requirement put in place by LB 647 grew out of the tax caps placed on cities and counties using the State and Local Consumption Expense (SLICE) index.
Cap exceptions were included in the legislation to give cities and counties a break related to public safety expenses, she said.
Hughes received her own property tax statement on Dec. 1.
“I thought the statement was good,” she said, noting it shows the public safety information as well as listing any credits applied for property taxpayers, such as homestead credits, non-ag tax credits, ag-land tax credits and school tax credits.
