On Monday, August 5th the West Fargo City Commission approved the preliminary budget for 2020. What this means, is that the overall mill levy from the city can’t be further increased beyond what was set in this meeting. The city can still tweak the budget or lower the mill levy (if possible) but the maximum mill levy is set for 2020.
The mill levy for West Fargo (not including schools, parks, or county) will increase to 77.95 mills compared to 73.22 mills in 2019. The biggest contributing factors to the increase in property taxes is for emergency services (fire and police). With the transition of our Fire Department to a highbred model (full-time and volunteer) along with it becoming a city entity (versus a separate nonprofit); there are some increased costs. Our fire department costs on a per capita basis are still significantly below that of neighboring Fargo. Our Police Department budget also increased in 2020.
It may look like the Library has a significantly increased 2020 budget but that is misleading. The overall operating costs of the library are inline with 2019 but our 2019 budget spent down some library reserve funds that artificially lowered the Library mill levy in the 2019 budget. The increased mill levy for the library in 2020 doesn’t reflect a large change in operations.
Nobody likes to see higher property taxes, but I am impressed by how city staff worked to manage the 2020 budget cycle and I do believe that increases for public safety (fire and police) are worth the investment by our community.
Eric GjerdeviG 
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