Albert Lea City Council meeting addresses two major topics

(ABC 6 News) – The Albert Lea City Council met on Monday night to shed some light on another year of increased property taxes for the city’s residents, and to decide on what to do with an open position after the City Attorney resigned.

The meeting was productive, but the question for those in attendance was, why is residential property tax going up once again?

The taxable market value in Albert Lea is up 24% in 2022.

When it comes to property tax, residential property tax in Albert Lea has the largest change in tax capacity.

Freeborn County Assessor, Ray Rasmussen was in attendance to assure people that these are just projections.

“Just because the values go up 20% like we saw this last year, doesn’t mean the taxes are going to go up that much,” says Rasmussen. “Truth and taxation notices will go out next month, so everyone will get a good idea of what to expect from their 2023 taxes.”

The preliminary tax capacity for residential properties is seeing a pretty big increase with a 30% change from one year ago.

The numbers are not final yet, but next month they are expected to be.

Another topic was filling the vacancy left after City Attorney Kelly Martinez resigned. Her last day will be on October 14.

City Manager Ian Rigg reached out and heard back from 30 other communities for recommendations on how to handle the situation leading him to recommend they put out “feelers” to hire someone in-house, and to look at contracting options.

“I think if we should just proceed with the dual track and see what we get and hopefully we are embarrassed with the riches presented before us, and get a lot of proposals,” said Rigg.

Rigg also noted that one reason he came to this decision was because of the diverse issues a City Attorney will need to be able to handle, which can be hard to find.