by Marianne Gasaway
The City of Clear Lake has set Monday, March 6, as the date for a public hearing on its Fiscal Year 2024 budget. City Finance Director Creighton Schmitt previewed the hearing by telling the City Council the proposed budget will provide a slight decrease in the city’s tax levy rate.
Schmitt addressed the Council at its Tuesday, Feb. 21 meeting. The meeting came on the heels of an announcement by the State that Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed Senate File 181 into law. The measure clarified the rollback calculation for residential and multi-residential property. City governments statewide had been waiting to finalize budget numbers because a miscalculation was made on the State level by the Iowa Department of Revenue.
By Iowa law, the Council must hold a public hearing and pass a resolution adopting the maximum property tax dollars for the upcoming fiscal year’s budget.
Schmidt said that as a result of Senate File 181, residential rollback numbers provide will drop by 1.85 percentage points. The measure also gives cities additional time to finalize their budgets. The deadline was moved from the end of March to late April.
Schmitt noted that City leaders held budget planning sessions with each department as usual and is prepared to finalize numbers based on new valuations.
“Of course, there will be some impacts to all of these numbers as far as the dollar amounts when we do see the new taxable valuations. The county has until March 9 to re-do the taxable valuations given the new Senate file, so they will make those new changes and we’ll get moving on our budget, and we’ll get it all out and get the process moving.”alarming decline. According to data gathered by the Key Biodiversity Partnership, the Amphibian Red List Authority, and others, nearly half of the world’s 8,000 amphibian species are currently threatened or are in danger of extinction. Some species are in freefall. Some have already vanished. Although too late for some species, networks are now being established to monitor, and hopefully reverse, this alarming trend.
In Iowa, extensive, boots-on-the-ground monitoring is already underway by means of the DNR’s annual Frog & Toad Call Survey. According to wildlife diversity biologist and survey coordinator, Stephanie Shepherd, the first surveys began in 1991 when a cadre of volunteer community scientists trooped out into the night to visit wetlands across the state. Since those first efforts, volunteers have collected data on more than 2,200 Iowa wetlands.
“It is very rare to have such a broad set of data collected over so many years on ONE species, much less on a whole group of vulnerable species,” says Shepherd. “But there are still survey routes that we need to fill, and we’re hoping to enlist additional volunteers through our Frog & Toad Call Survey workshops that will be held during March and April.”
“Each species of frog or toad has a distinctive call that it uses to attract mates,” said Shepherd. “What we are looking for are people with an adventurous spirit who are willing to learn up to 16 different breeding calls. The time commitment is a total of 10 hours from April through July, and each volunteer is required to be out in the dark during two hours of each survey period.”
Interested volunteers should begin by visiting https:/www.iowadnr.gov/vwmp. Before taking to the state’s backwaters, ponds and marshlands, prospective surveyors must first attend one of four scheduled in person or online workshops. In person survey training is scheduled for April 4 at Clayton County’s Osborne Nature Center and April 11 at Buena Vista County’s Gabrielson Park. Virtual on Zoom [live] is scheduled for March 12 at 1 p.m. and March 20 at 6:30 p.m. Questions may be directed to Stephanie Shepherd at vwmp@dnr.iowa.gov
Enjoy more wildlife tales online at Washburn’s Outdoor Journal at iawildlife.org/blog
