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HARRISON TOWNSHIP— At its meeting on May 11, the Harrison Township Board of Trustees, in a 7-0 vote, approved language for a millage now set to appear on the ballot in August.
According to items attached to the agenda, the current millage is set to expire this year. The township is asking voters to approve 9.0831 mills for the next four years. The millage will help cover “police, fire and general business” operations within the township.
The last time the board asked for a millage renewal was in 2022 and it was for 9.25 mills. However, they only levied 8.7 mills
“The reason for this is that the Headlee Amendment rolls back the approved millage rate based on inflation,” the agenda item stated. “In other words, if a multi-year millage is approved by the voters for 5.000 mills, and the taxable value of our property is $1 billion, it will generate $5 million in the first year. If the taxable value goes up by 3% in year two, the millage rate for the second year has to be reduced so that it only generates $5 million.”
According to the material, if the board didn’t ask for a higher millage rate, the township might have to ask for too much in the first two years to balance the budget in the last two years. The current millage rate has been rolled back to 9.0831 mills.
The agenda item explained that this looks like an increase to residents though the township calls it a renewal. If they keep the rolled back millage rate, the millage would have a 0.3831 mill “cushion.”
“Based on averages from the last few years, we should expect to be able to still levy 8.70 mills in year four,” the agenda item stated. “We also did a ‘worst case’ calculation: in year three we would levy 8.6946 mills, and in year four we would levy 8.5641 mills. This would represent a shortage of approximately $8,000 in year three and $200,000 in year four.”
Township Supervisor Kenneth Verkest said the last four years he feels they’ve had a pretty favorable rollback.
“Where we have historically said to this board maybe, ‘Hey, we want to do the 9.25 so we have a cushion to be able to levy 8.7 (mills) for four years,’ we don’t think we even need to do that,” Verkest said. “We think the 9.08 (mills) is sufficient.”
The election will be on Aug. 4 of this year.
