You Ask, Patch Answers: City Manager Replies to Millage Questions

"You Ask, Patch Answers" is where we strive to find answers to all your questions—big, small and in-between—about the town we live and work in.

Whether it’s something you’ve always wondered about, some information you just can’t put your hands on or a sudden curiosity, we want to hear it.

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Public safety millage questions and answers: Questions and comments have been pouring in to Royal Oak Patch since the Royal Oak City Commission unanimously voted to start the process to put a referendum on the ballot this November asking the voters for a public safety millage of 3.975 mills over five years.

To answer readers' millage questions, Patch has ran a series of Q & As with Interim Police Chief Corrigan O’Donohue. This week, City Manager Don Johnson jumps in to answer questions on the ballot proposal.

[Read more answers to your millage questions.]

Is this the largest millage request in city history, and has the city ever requested a charter override as this one requires?

Royal Oaks charter originally authorized the city to levy up to 20 mills for general operations.  Today, the maximum is 7.3947, which is what we levy. The voters have authorized additional levies many times in the past.  Some of those are expired or were not renewed. Currently, we have additional levies for solid waste and library.  We also have a voter authorized debt levy from fire bonds. 

The current millage proposal is not a charter override.  It is an addition to the charter.  The provision regarding the general operating levy is not modified by this proposal.

I was hoping someone could provide data on how much tax money is collected from the downtown compared to how much is spent on the downtown. I think this would help settle the argument about whether or not the homeowners are being asked to subsidize the downtown.

We do not account for revenues or expenditures geographically.   It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to do so. Taxes can be calculated on that basis, with some effort of course, but most revenues and most expenditures can not.  However, I don’t need to do that to answer the underlying question. 

Businesses subsidize homeowners, not the other way around. I know some argue that policing the downtown is a drain on resources but revenue from parking alone (fees and tickets), which is all generated downtown, more than cover the cost of policing downtown.  That’s without even counting taxes paid by business to the city, or payments made by the Downtown Development Authority (DDA).  

When you look at everything you pay taxes for this is even more evident.  Like you, businesses also pay taxes for schools, county parks, HCMA parks, and the zoo.  They pay a much higher tax rate than homeowners for schools because they don’t get the homestead exemption.  Yet they put no students into the schools and they have almost no impact on parks or the zoo. 

What cities do the city manager, the police chief, and fire chief reside in?

The City Manager lives in Wayne, the Police Chief in Livonia and the Fire Chief in White Lake.   

All public safety union contracts expire June 2013. Wouldn't passing such a large millage now at the lower manpower levels just give a bargaining advantage in any arbitration process to the unions since we now have all this extra money?

The amount of the millage proposal is only enough to pay for existing services and the stated improvements, including increasing the police department to 79 officers at current rates of pay and benefits.  Once that is done, there won’t be extra money.