One of the many items up for discussion at the Greenfield City Council’s November 18 regular meeting was whether city would stay with a single property tax rate.
The motion on the floor for this meeting was to adopt a single tax rate—i.e., residential and commercial property owners all public the same rate.
Greenfield has always had a single property tax rate. However, the idea to split it such that commercial property owners pay a higher rate than residential property owners has come up a number of times in the pay few years. The split tax rate discussion has happened against the backdrop of the broader conversation around town about Greenfield’s tax base and the burden of taxation on residents.
Wednesday night’s motion to adopt a single tax rate for the coming year arrived at the Council via the Ways & Means Committee, which gave it a unanimous positive recommendation.1 Check out this summary of the Nov. 17 Ways & Means Committee meeting for the arguments for and against a single tax rate.
The City Council ended up passing the motion unanimously on Wednesday, thereby sticking with a single tax rate. They also voted unanimously not to adopt any tax exemptions—either residential or small business—to the tax rate. The whys and wherefores of those additional motions can also be found in the Ways & Means post I reference above.
There were a bunch of other topics on the agenda for Wednesday night’s Council meeting (it ran four and a half hours), but I will address those in separate posts.
- That is Councilese for “Everyone on the Ways & Means Committee thought it was a good idea.” ↩