Hamilton citizens want better communication from the city

The Hamilton Board of Aldermen met Wednesday with all council present along with Mayor Winford Gilliam, City Administrator, Dale Wallace and City Attorney Robert Cowherd.

The city began by passing Ordnance 1571 which set the levy for property taxes for the city of Hamilton for the year 2015 for general, library, parts and debt services. Wallace said assessed valuation went up approximately a million due to the construction of the new shipping center building at the south end of town owned by MSQ, plus reassessment of commercial buildings that were renovated and some personal property tax increases. Wallace said the State of Missouri has the Handcock Amendment which does not allow a windfall of taxation from increased assessed evaluation, so taxes went down almost 11 cents compared to a year ago. The exception would be if you bought more personal property or made improvements on existing property. Wallace said the city has three general operating bonds still in place. One was just passed for the pool which had previously been .39 cents and was lowered to .35. The other two for water improvements went down slightly. Cowherd explained that just because someone’s assessed valuation goes up, that necessarily doesn’t mean that their taxes will go up. There are other factors that are included in a tax bill. When assessed valuation goes up tax rates generally go down.

For more on this story, see this week's edition of the Caldwell County News!