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BACKUS - Cass County Chief Financial Officer Larry Wolfe told the county board Tuesday the information property taxpayers received this week is slightly higher than the board now expects to approve for a final county levy in December.

The county budget committee has recommended lowering the levy from the preliminary levy set in September. The board expects to use the lower rate when they set the final levy by using some fund balance reserves.

This means taxpayers can multiply the county share of the amount on their 2016 tax estimate by 98 percent, Wolfe said. This reduction does not apply to city, town or school portions shown on the estimated tax statements.

For the county levy portion only, 20 percent of taxpayers are expected to see a reduction in 2016, while 63 percent will see zero to 10 percent increases, 9 percent will see 10 to 20 percent increases and 8 percent will see more than a 20 percent increase.

For all Cass County taxing jurisdictions (county, city, town, school added together), 19 percent can expect a 2016 reduction, while 43 percent will see zero to 10 percent increases, 21 percent will see 10 to 20 percent increases and 17 percent will see over 20 percent increases.

Wolfe said Northland Remer-Longville School tax estimate received on the preliminary statements also are not accurate, because voters there approved a new building construction levy after the tax estimate notices had been prepared for mailing.

Taxpayers will see only a slight increase. An amount for safety improvement costs already had been figured for Remer-Longville area. That safety improvement amount will be replaced by the new building amount.

The safety improvement would have cost $1.3 million. Instead of paying that, now Remer-Longville School taxpayers will pay $1,561,230 for a new school or share $261,230 more than they would have paid for the safety improvements.

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