A man in a suit is pinning a badge on a police officer. Another officer is standing behind them.
Southgate Mayor Jim Hamberg (right) and Police Chief John Christmann (middle) present a sergeant badge to Garrett Haynes (left). Haynes’ family was on hand for the badge pinning. Seated at left, council member Joe Anderson looks on. At the August council meeting, the mayor and police chief had surprised Haynes with his sergeant stripes during the retirement of his K-9 partner. Photo by Robin Gee | LINK nky contributor

Southgate held a public hearing Wednesday to propose its 2024-2025 property tax rates.

The property tax rate includes the state compensating rate plus the allowed 4%, but the rate is down slightly from the previous year. The new rate is $5.24 per $1000 of assessed value, down from $5.25 last year.

The proposed rate for personal property dropped to $4.85 per $1000 of assessed value, a marked decrease from $7.27 per $1000 last year.

How do property taxes work?

Property taxes are broken down into several categories. The first and usually largest chunk of your tax bill is real property tax, sometimes referred to as real estate property tax. This is essentially a tax on everything you own that’s nailed down. For residents, this means houses and other real estate property. For businesses, this means office buildings and other buildings and facilities used to conduct business.

Tangible personal property, on the other hand, is another form of property that isn’t real estate. Depending on where you live, residents may not be taxed on personal property at all–this will vary by jurisdiction.

Depending on where you live, other tax-adjacent fees may apply.

Read more here.

Mayor Jim Hamberg said he expects the rates to go down even more in coming years as the new Memorial Point and other developments come on board.

Regarding the Memorial Point development, Hamberg said, “This will provide an additional $64,000 and change in property tax revenues, which we did not anticipate at the time of the budget in June.”

Regarding the personal property tax rate, he said he also anticipates an increase in revenue for the city over the year as new residents register their vehicles and new businesses register their purchases of new equipment.

The city kept its firehouse tax rate the same as last year at .5387 per $1000. The tax will fund the acquisition, construction, equipping and maintaining of a firehouse and related facilities.

“The new development, as well as our conservative fiscal approach with conservative spending by all departments, as well as increased efforts to collect occupational license fees, past due taxes and civil fines, will allow us to provide the opportunity of reducing the tax burden on residents and businesses even more year over year,” Hamberg said.

After the hearing, the council heard a second reading of the tax rate ordinances and approved them all.