Manitowoc Mayor Justin Nickels
As we have previously reported, the 2021 Executive Budget for the City of Manitowoc was approved on Monday by the Common Council.
Mayor Justin Nickels spoke with SeehaferNews.com about the meeting, and he said there was lots of healthy discussion.
“The debate last night, the conversation, was very healthy,” he explained. “I said at the end of the day to a couple of Council members that there was no wrong answer and no wrong comments about what anyone said about any item we were discussing because they had a good healthy debate.”
Mayor Nickels said one of the most important parts of the budget was the property tax payments section. Mayor Nickels said, “It will be a little over a 1% property tax decrease. As I mentioned before, this was a priority going into the budget because of COVID. Because citizens lost their jobs or lost wages throughout this last year.”
Another major aspect of the Budget was the continued reduction of the City’s debt. The City is currently about $50 million in debt, which is a decrease of $26 million over the past decade, and the “rainy day fund” has risen to around $5.3 million, compared to just under $17,000 in 2010.
Mayor Nickels said that “Some of the people that have been there for a couple of years like Eric Sitkiewitz and Jim Brey, made comments about they remember where we were 10 years ago, 15 years ago. Just overloaded with debt, we had no city reserves, we had to have a 10% tax increase one year, we had to borrow from our own utility, it was just a mess.”
Mayor Nickels also thanked the Council for all their hard work on the budget, “Especially our Finance Director Steve Corbeille, who helped compile this budget which will be his last before he retires.”
