Ad Valorem Taxes and the Kansas Public Budgeting Process
The City has received a lot of calls and heard the conversation regarding the public entity budgeting process, the flyer residents received from the County this week, and how it all relates to your ad valorem property taxes. I wanted to take an opportunity to clarify some of the processes that have already occurred and those that are still upcoming.
July 20th – Deadline for Cities, School Districts, Counties, and other taxing entities to inform the County Clerk if they intend to exceed the Revenue Neutral Rate (raise property taxes), and to set a mill levy ceiling for their budget process. Once this ceiling is set, the taxing entities cannot exceed that mill levy in their final budget. NOTE: This ceiling is the value on the flyer that residents recently received from the County. That flyer does NOT show the final proposed budget for the City, County, or School District, only the ceiling that they must work under during the budget process.
August 20th – September 20th – This is the window when taxing entities must hold their Revenue Neutral Rate (RNR) public hearing and their budget public hearing. The dates and times of those public hearings are shown on the flyer that residents received from the County.
Atchison County will hold both public hearings on August 26th at 6 pm at Memorial Hall.
The City of Atchison will hold both public hearings on September 8th at 4:30 pm at City Hall.
USD 409 will hold their public hearings on September 8th at 5:45 pm at 626 Commercial Street.
Atchison Recreation Commission will hold their public hearings on September 8th at 5:00 pm at Memorial Hall.
The City of Atchison does not control any of the other taxing entities listed above, but for our part, we held our meeting to set the mill levy ceiling on July 14th. We set that ceiling at 49.125 mills, around 9.5% over revenue neutral as reflected in the County’s flyer that residents received this week. Since that meeting in July, City Staff and the City Commission have continued to hold budget workshops to reduce the proposed budget for 2026. As a result of that process, we published our final proposed budget in the Atchison Globe on August 14th, showing 46.498 mills, around 1.6 mills over the Revenue Neutral Rate. This amounts to a 3.4% increase in tax revenue in 2026. Some of that increase will go to the Atchison Public Library, which is included in the City’s municipal budget, but operates independently of the City. The details of the proposed budget will be presented by me, the City Manager, to the City Commission and the public at the September 2nd City Commission meeting, but these budget numbers are NOT legally finalized until after the RNR and budget public hearings on September 8th.
I will be putting together a few more posts about the City of Atchison’s financial health and property tax positioning ahead of the September 2nd and September 8th City Commission meetings.