Will be hiring new director
LIBERTY LAKE – With the new year here, the city of Liberty Lake has begun looking into some of the changes that will be happening throughout 2024.
According to Finance Director, Kyle Dixon, there are a few big items on the agenda.
Dixon said with city council accepting the Transportation Benefit District (TBD), there will be some changes to taxes coming soon.
The TBD will essentially allow the city to use sales tax revenues to fund road projects.
There had been ongoing discussions about how that would be paid for, and the two options were either raising utility taxes or sales tax.
According to Dixon, the city decided to go with the latter for a few reasons. Dixon said sales taxes are increasing from 8.9% and will increase to a flat 9% for 2024.
That .1% increase will be transferred over to the city for street and road maintenance moving forward.
According to Dixon, this strategy is a more advantageous approach to having taxes fund street projects.
“There is a portion of the RCW that allows for sales tax to fund Transportation Benefit District operations and maintenance,” Dixon said. “The city council determined that was a more advantageous taxing mechanism.”
“We had historically funded street operations through utility tax.”
He said this means that anyone traveling to Liberty Lake to shop will also be contributing to the funding of the TBD.
“You can spread sales tax over a larger base of people,” Dixon said. “Namely folks that are traveling to Liberty Lake and shopping.”
“Verses confining utility tax to the boundaries of Liberty Lake. You’re spreading that burden to a greater number of people.”
Dixon said that up to this point, the city has used utility taxes to pay for street projects, but residents may get some relief there as well.
According to Dixon, the utility tax will drop from 3% down to 1%.
Dixon said some other changes will be coming to Liberty Lake as well, including a new public works facility and the anticipated hiring of a new director.
“We’re kind of using 2024 as a transition year,” Dixon said. “To build out the newly formed public works department.”
He also said the city will be looking into the design stages for the new municipal library.
Matthew graduated from West Virginia University-Parkersburg in 2011 with a journalism degree. He's an award-winning photographer and enjoys writing stories about people.
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