Nowthen city government, in plain English.
Search council meetings, the budget, property taxes, roads, and city vehicles, with links to the original records.
Ask a real question and the archive searches indexed meetings, packets, and minutes to answer it. Try one:
Analysis from Dan Swenson
All articles →Separate from the search tool: bylined explainers on the budget, taxes, and tradeoffs, with the math linked back to city records.
Where the levy increase came from, what each spending category pays for, what staff saved, and why spending a dollar now avoids five later. Every figure from the city record.
The survey came back with three loud, shared wishes: don’t change Nowthen, fix the roads, and don’t raise taxes. You can have any two of those. You cannot have all three. Here is why, in the city’s own budget.
You’ve heard that development “grows the tax base.” Here is the math behind that idea: how the city tax rate is set, why even a lot of new residential development may not move the needle on the rate even with an expanded tax base, and what it costs every home in Nowthen to keep the city undeveloped, worked through a real commercial project proposed in recent Nowthen history.
The council voted 3 to 2 to order a new tandem dump truck and plow instead of rebuilding the city’s 26-year-old Sterling. Here are the real numbers, why a used truck was not the cheap shortcut it sounds like, and why salt, not mileage, retires a plow truck.
Explore your property taxes
Your property tax, explained →Interactive tools and plain-English breakdowns, built from the city's own budget and official tax data.
The calculator: how much development moves the rate.
The average bill, split into a plain-English receipt.
See the rate and the average home’s bill move.
Try to balance the budget with the locked items set aside.