JAMESTOWN — Mayor Dwaine Heinrich said Jamestown’s future is brighter than it has ever been and the community must work together to make Bison World and a hydrogen facility that makes fertilizer a reality.
“To accomplish this all, we need to continue to work hard and recognize that we are going to have new people moving to Jamestown,” he said.
Hopefully this property tax elimination proposal now in play will not get the required number of signatures to make the ballot.
Jamestown Mayor Dwaine Heinrich
He said most people in Jamestown have a sense of community where they work together to make the city a better place.
“That’s not something you always find in every community,” he said.
Heinrich delivered the first-ever State of the City address on Thursday, April 25, at North Dakota Farmers Union.
John M. Steiner / The Jamestown Sun
Heinrich touted the plethora of new businesses and advancements of others in the community since he moved to Jamestown in 1978. He said the Jamestown/Stutsman Development Corp.’s economic development success since its creation has been “phenomenal.”
“I love being at state meetings where the jealousy of Jamestown is hard for others to keep hidden,” he said.
Since 1978, he said the Jamestown area has seen several businesses come online, including Cavendish Farms, Agri-Cover Inc., Spiritwood Station, Dakota Spirit AgEnergy ethanol plant, Champ Industries, Applied Digital and Green Bison Soy Processing. The community has seen a new hospital built in Jamestown Regional Medical Center as well as a new Anne Carlsen Center facility.
“We have witnessed remarkable advances at the University of Jamestown,” Heinrich said. “In this same time Jamestown built a new high school as well as the Two Rivers Activity Center.”
He said the Jamestown Civic Center has also seen significant changes after UJ and Jamestown High School basketball teams got new venues to play. The Civic Center staff, community members and tournament directors recently helped make the 2024 North Dakota Division B Girls Basketball State Tournament a success, he said.
“This hard work and dedication has resulted in Jamestown being awarded state basketball tournaments for at least the next seven consecutive years,” he said.
He also said Jamestown Regional Airport offers the “best” commercial airline service of any small city in the U.S.
Property tax elimination proposal ‘must be defeated’
Heinrich said the property tax elimination proposal “must be defeated” if it gets on the ballot.
“Hopefully this property tax elimination proposal now in play will not get the required number of signatures to make the ballot,” he said.
He said the proposal is “misguided” and “disingenuous” and directs the state to reimburse all local political subdivisions for the property tax revenue generated in 2024.
“Please consider that the money the city general fund receives from property taxes is nearly exhausted by the police, fire and municipal court budgets alone,” he said.
If the proposal is approved, Heinrich said the state would be almost bankrupt in a few short years and Legacy Fund would be “squandered.” He said the state Constitution requires a balanced budget and the state cannot print money.
“Ask proponents how they will continue to fund the Prairie Dog bill, which currently generates about $2.5 million a year for Jamestown city infrastructure,” he said. “For the past five years, including this biennium, we will receive about $12.4 million for infrastructure from oil revenue which funds Prairie Dog. We will also have received so far about $6.7 million in grant dollars to assist with waterline replacement costs and the pedestrian park bridge replacement project.”
Since 2017, the state has invested $7 million in grant funds in Jamestown to buy down interest rates for new and expanding business through the PACE or the Flex PACE programs.
“Where are the replacement funds going to come from to keep these programs working for our community,” he asked. “The short answer is they will come from you or they go away.”
If the proposal is defeated, Heinrich said the state Legislature will need to look at some type of property tax reform.
“With enough thought and discussion, perhaps a method can be developed that can provide some property tax relief without bankrupting the state and causing chaos throughout our local political subdivisions,” he said. “What we need here is thoughtful consideration, not flippant answers to questions for which one has no serious answers.”
Heinrich said the question that needs to be asked is how an equivalent amount of money can be generated where there can be meaningful property tax reductions.
“One could also easily argue that if the state were going to provide funds to replace property taxes in an equitable fashion it should perhaps be done on a per-capita basis, so as to not perpetuate the inequities we now have across the state in property tax valuations,” he said.
He said one problem with property tax is communities not having the same dollar valuation of property per capita to levy property taxes. He said Jamestown is the ninth-largest city in the state and he looked at the taxable valuation of the city versus the other largest cities a couple of years ago.
“At that time our mill levy was over 300 and it struck me when I realized that if we would have the same property value per capita as the average of the other … largest cities, a mill levy of 199 mills would have generated $500,000 more than our 300 mills,” he said. “With property taxes, all cities are not created equally.”
Heinrich said the city of Jamestown has about $1.2 billion taxable property at market value, which does not include tax-exempt properties.
He said property taxes are high but there is a misconception that mill levies have increased greatly in Jamestown over the last few years. He said the mill levy was 373.35 mills in 2014 for all taxing entities in Jamestown – city, parks and recreation, Jamestown Public School District, Stutsman County and the state.
“The total in 2023 for those same entities was 337.17 mills or a reduction of mills over the past 10 years of 36.18,” he said.
Heinrich said property tax bills have increased during the past 10 years and attributes that to increased property values and other increased costs due to inflation. He said the average sales price of a home in Jamestown was almost $140,000 versus over $184,000 in 2023.
“Inflationary information is taken into consideration as well when cost-of-living raises are considered and is a factor in driving up costs,” he said.
He said special assessments are not property taxes even though they are on property tax statements. He said special assessments won’t go away under the property tax elimination proposal.
“The city speaking in general terms does not build streets or roads or maintain streets or roads using property tax,” he said. “This is primarily an expense of the property adjacent to the streets and roads just as it is developer costs when they develop a new addition to the city.”
