Pretty Charts with Deceptive Messaging – the sky is falling???

 To sum this up, the narrative advanced by the current Board is financially deceptive and glosses over the fact that the current Chair and Vice Chair were on the Board several years ago that contributed to the levee shortfall they now insist be fixed with imagined golden commercial zoning.

 Now we all pay the Piper.  Do you want to add your tax share to protect what we have or take a chance on imagined gains from commercial or industrial development NEXT TO YOU?

 I have studied the pretty display charts presented at the December 17, 2024, Open House.  Serious analysis can’t be done on surprise information shown for the first time at a poorly attended event. The devil (and the truth) is in the details.

I have looked at the sloppy and misleading “data” they presented. The “Loss of Taxable Land Compared to Increase in Levy Over Time” is the most egregious deception, but some other points first, in the order of the charts. Those of you on the Eureka email list would have received your own copy of the exhibits 2 days AFTER the Open House.  How convenient…

 The first one misleads “The development density in Eureka Township is 1 residential unit per 40 acres.”  Agricultural Zoning is 1 per quarter-quarter Section (QQ) as surveyed by Public Land Survey about 160 years ago.  40 acres implies 40 anywhere, not true and some residents have been surprised to find they do not control a housing right when their 40 is spread 20 in one QQ and 20 in the next QQ. That’s why you have NEVER heard me use the “1 per 40” or worse, “1 per 10” terminology. It is misleading and inaccurate.

The real story is that Eureka’s actual full build-out density is approximately 1.8 households per QQ because of early development not as spread out (remember Eureka Estates’ 75 houses),

plus about 200 QQ’s not yet developed out of about 572 (down from original 576),

plus another 180 smaller parcels that appear to have grandfathered housing rights.

The 1990 cluster feature expanded on in 2013  allows up to 4 houses to be built in a QQ but only using existing housing rights per Met Council restrictions on the total in Eureka Township.

The next exhibit states the misleading fact that Lakeville annexed 590.46 acres from Eureka, not counting MAC airport acquisitions.  The full story is that every one of those non-airport acres was requested by their owners to be annexed into Lakeville.  Lakeville has not been out “taking” acreage. And as I mentioned in an earlier blog, Lakeville actually declined one annexation request from a Eureka owner. Did a Town Board ever talk to any of those owners about what might keep them in Eureka?  I did when I was on the Board.

The Air Lake airport is under Metropolitan Airport Commission ownership and authority. It is exempted by Minnesota from property taxes as with schools and churches. It was low value undeveloped farmland to begin with.

 Next comes a table incorrectly describing 2024 Property Tax losses from Eureka. A footnote points out that Dakota County School District Taxes are not included. That means that the Dakota County administrative share of the property tax IS included.  My 2024 tax statement shows 62% for Lakeville school district, 20% for Dakota County, and 18% for Eureka.  So the Adelmann farm “loss” was only 18/38 of the $3306 for Eureka, or $1566, for undeveloped land.

 The Adelmann land had two housing rights – one was transferred in 2015 and the other in 2021 before their request to Lakeville to be annexed was accepted. Those transfers enabled two houses to be built elsewhere in Eureka, adding to those lands’ value and taxes.  An average house today will add about $5000 in taxes to the land it is on.  This totals about $2000 in Eureka tax revenue for the two houses, more than the $1566 loss for the undeveloped land.

 Neither of those two rights would have been preserved under the pre-2013 Cluster feature. Yet, according to Chair Storlie, housing right Transfers sure have been a disaster for Eureka residents…

 The 2021 Ruddle property loss included the unfortunate loss of a housing right they could have been sold before annexation. This is also lost tax revenue for a house elsewhere in Eureka.

 Now for the most deceptive story NOT told about the pretty graph I mentioned at the start. Below is my read of the chart indicated by the green line I added. First, the red line shows taxable land loss over the 2005-2024 time period of the graph.  A scale is not given, but the dollar scale on the left suggests that about 20% of Eureka land was lost.  The data in the exhibits indicated 590 acres lost out of 22,527 which is 2.6%, not anywhere close to the 20% the chart implies.

 

More importantly, look at how my green line shows what steady levee increases would have looked like. Instead, actual totals show a decline and leveling off of the levee from 2011-2019, nine years. Did you know there was no inflation in America for that decade?

Current Board Vice Chair and Road Supervisor Mark Ceminsky is the first to advise we have to increase our funds for road maintenance to make up for the past neglect. But, gee, he and Chair Pete Storlie were on the Board in the midst of that funding drought that certainly contributed to the deferred maintenance on the roads.

 Now the only solution they can think of is to scatter commercial and industrial zoning all across the township to depress adjacent property values wherever they land with no guarantee they will attract nationally disappearing small businesses that actually could increase tax revenue per acre. 

Show us ANY of the current businesses in the Township that actually pay MORE taxes per acre than nice looking quiet houses.

Elections and financial competence matter.