By Robert Tomlinson
News Director
CENTREVILLE — For about an hour Tuesday, St. Joseph County was on track to collect zero property tax revenue this summer for its governmental operations.
However, a last-second change of vote saved the county’s operating millage as well as a number of other county millages voted on by residents, allowing the St. Joseph County government to fully function and avoid crippling many essential county services and operations.
On Tuesday, commissioners initially voted down what is known as an L-4029 millage request for 2025 by a vote of 4-3, with commissioners Christina Yunker, Terry Conklin, Rusty Baker and Luis Rosado voting against its approval due to concerns over rising property taxes.
But, during commissioner’s comments, Rosado decided he wanted to change his vote after other commissioners had made their comments about the move and received clarification on one of his main concerns. He then made a motion to reconsider the approval of the request.
That motion to reconsider was approved 4-3, with Rosado, Jared Hoffmaster, Rick Shaffer and Ken Malone voting yes, and after bringing up the L-4029 again for a vote, the same four commissioners also voted yes in a 4-3 decision to approve the millages for the year.
“I expected at least some dissent, but I did not expect it to fail originally,” County Equalization Director Josh Simmons, who brought forth the request, said in an interview following the meeting.
An L-4029 is a document that taxing authorities use to levy property taxes for certain items. For St. Joseph County, these are millages that affect the operation of the county, with the county’s operating millage that is levied on the summer tax bill, and millages that are voted on by county residents at the ballot box, including the 911 millage, Commission on Aging (COA) millage, road millage, and County Transportation Authority millage. It also includes the county’s parks millage, which was approved by the Board of Commissioners under Public Act 90 of 1913 and was last renewed in 2021. The remaining millages are levied on the winter tax bill.
“It is simply approving the millages that will create tax revenue for the county, or for the taxing authority for specific purposes,” Simmons said following the meeting.
What was proposed for this year’s L-4029 was a slight reduction in the millage rates across the board due to the Headlee Amendment, which requires that millage rates be reduced if property values in an area go up at a higher rate than the rate of inflation. The county’s operating millage would go down from 4.5162 to 4.4863 mills, the 911 millage would go down from 0.9930 mills to 0.9864 mills, the COA millage would go down from 0.75 to 0.7450, the transportation millage would go down from 0.3296 to 0.3274 mills, the roads millage would go down from 1 mill to 0.9934 mills, and the parks millage would go down from 0.2489 to 0.2472.
However, with that, the total taxable value in St. Joseph County went up by 6 percent between 2024 and 2025, faster than the 3.1 percent rate of inflation. This increase, according to Simmons, is in part due to new construction that took place last year. Because of this, the county is expected to bring in a total of 5.42 percent more with these millages in 2025, approximately $21.85 million in total, than they did in 2024, $20.73 million, despite the reduction in the millage rate.
Normally, such requests for approval of these documents are passed easily without much controversy, with Simmons saying in an interview following the meeting that other such directors in the state he talked to had “never heard of an L-4029 ever not being approved.” However, some confusion about what authority the county had in regards to other certain millages was one of the main causes as to why the original L-4029 was voted down.
Resident Paige Willis, in public comment, stated that she didn’t believe the county should approve the L-4029, mentioning that the county’s operating millage hasn’t been brought to a vote of the people since 1998, and also brought her claims about what she called a “double dip” by the county.
“All most local public schools as well have done their own millage or bond to go about getting their stuff done that they needed to be completed, so the taxpayers already vote on that, so I don’t think the county should double dip and have the county pay for it on our taxes there and the local people on our local taxes as well,” Willis said. “I highly suggest you do not pass this tonight, and look into it and possibly put it back on a ballot for the people to vote on it.”
Willis, in her comments, also mentioned Glen Oaks Community College’s millage – which is done separately from the county’s L-4029 – saying that she had a conversation with the college’s administration, who said if their millage went to zero, they would “not be hurting” and wouldn’t be asking for an increase.
Simmons, when asked by Rosado about Willis’ comments during Tuesday’s meeting, said back in 1976, there was an allocation vote of the people via the state constitution, which is a non-expiring millage that is allocated to the county, townships and the ISD. Those millages are rolled back as part of the Headlee amendment, but do not expire. He said they could be put to a vote of the people to override the Headlee rollback or put it up for a vote to re-do them entirely.
Rosado then brought up the St. Joseph County ISD’s 0.24-mill operating millage, which is a part of those allocations mentioned by Simmons but was not mentioned by Willis in her comment, asking if the ISD “[doesn’t] need that money,” if county commissioners could do something to take that off the ledger. Simmons said the county does not have the authority to stop the ISD from levying their authorized millage, but the county has the authority to not levy the county’s own entire millage and potentially levy less than the maximum allowable.
ISD Chief Financial Officer Kelli Dechnik said in an interview Wednesday that their operating millage accounts for 5 to 15 percent of their budget, and is used primarily to pay employees’ salaries and benefits, as well as pay for things like gas, electric and repairs.
Rosado said in an interview Tuesday night after the meeting that because he wanted to lower property taxes and discuss the L-4029 further, he was the swing vote in voting down the initial motion.
“I was trying to figure out a way we could reduce some of these mills so that our citizens can get a tax break,” Rosado said.
However, the decision was brought up again later on in the meeting during the commissioner’s comments section. Hoffmaster railed against the vote in his comments, saying that the county’s operating millage pays for a number of things, including for the Sheriff’s Office, prosecutor’s office and courthouse operations.
“Nobody likes paying property taxes, certainly I do not like paying property taxes, but you do have to understand, if you look at the county’s budget, almost 50 percent of that goes to our sheriff’s office, our courthouse, our county courts system, our prosecutor’s office. It’s very easy to say, let’s just go to zero on property taxes, or we do non-essential, but it’s very difficult to actually see what that looks like,” Hoffmaster said. “Everybody believes our officers, our deputies, deserve to be paid more for what they do. We gave them a 5 percent increase. We won’t be able to do that 5 percent increase if we can’t pass a 3.1 percent inflation increase.”
Hoffmaster then asked Simmons what would happen with the vote that was taken, to which Simmons said the county, because they voted down the L-4029, would collect “zero county taxes.” Hoffmaster continued.
“So, when you hear states talking about defunding the police, we literally just defunded police,” Hoffmaster said. “So, it has consequences. You have to think about these things. Nobody wants that, us seven don’t want to defund the police, but we just did, because we have zero revenue coming in.”
Hoffmaster then asked what the county needs to do to make sure they can have income from summer taxes, to which Simmons said, “that’s a good question.” Rosado suggested bringing it up at the next Executive Committee meeting, but was then informed by County Treasurer Kathy Humphreys that because of the quantity of summer tax bills that need to go out and the deadline of July 1 to mail them out, they would need to get bills to a mailing company by the first week of June, well before the next Executive Committee meeting.
The idea of an emergency meeting was then brought about, while Rosado mentioned just getting rid of the ISD millage before County Administrator Teresa Cupp said the ISD was “not part of this” and the county was not considering approval of the ISD millage that night. Simmons then said if they want to have a vote of the people, the earliest it could occur would be in November, well past the summer tax season.
That new information caused Rosado to bring forth the motion to reconsider the L-4029, and the subsequent re-approval of the millage request. Conklin said during discussion of the motion to reconsider that the county should consider “tighten[ing] up our belt a little bit” with the county’s spending. Hoffmaster then reiterated the county spends money on police, courts and the prosecutor’s office, because it’s “part of what we have to do to provide services.” Baker then said “if we stopped spending so much, we wouldn’t even need to do this.”
“All these frivolous programs that we keep supporting, we can go away with that. Just because we have that money, doesn’t mean we have to spend every dime we’ve got,” Baker said.
Rosado said he agreed with Baker that it is “something we need to work on.”
In other business…
- In a lengthy public comment period, many people in the full commission chambers spoke on the subject of the county’s parks, following comments made by Yunker at the commission’s April meeting saying she would advocate for having the county divest itself from Covered Bridge Farm County Park and Cade Lake Campground due to rentable facilities at those parks “directly competing with tax-paying businesses.” More on that will be in an upcoming edition of the Commercial-News.
Robert Tomlinson can be reached at 279-7488 or robert@wilcoxnewspapers.com.
looks like Rosado is the only one on that board looking to save taxpayers money