The City recently sent out survey questions to our residents and asked for feedback on what the city should or should not do, or what to prioritize going forward. There were several overwhelmingly shared views: (1) that Nowthen should not change and that no commercial development is desired; (2) that our roads suck and need to be better; and (3) that no one wants increased taxes. This article is intended to explain why these three goals are impossible to achieve together. You can achieve any two of them together, but you cannot achieve all three at the same time. Something has to give.
Nowthen has traditionally had a fairly low tax rate when compared to other cities in Anoka County. Nowthen also has traditionally been a low-service, low-development city. It is why I moved my family to Nowthen and is also why I love living in Nowthen. I imagine you also value this about the city you live in. The problem with this setup, though, is that our city is and has been underfunded for years. Deferred purchases of equipment, deferred road maintenance, and lagging salaries and wages with high turnover of staff have led to a brittle city. Our infrastructure is obviously not great. Nearly half of our city roads are gravel. We have a great staff in place now, but due to high turnover and high interpersonal conflict between prior councils and prior city staff, our city has struggled to keep qualified and skilled employees in place to take care of city business.
I am not passing judgment on anything that went on in this city that led us to this point. I am merely pointing out that, at this moment in time, playing catchup on wages, equipment, and infrastructure are 100% necessary to at least maintain our current performance as a city. The only way this can be achieved is to have more tax dollars to spend on wages, equipment, and infrastructure like roads. Those tax dollars have to come from somewhere. Most people's natural inclination is to want to believe that there must be money elsewhere in the budget that could be freed up and spent on the “important” stuff instead. Go look at our budget. There is nowhere we can cut the budget enough in any “unimportant” categories to raise spending on the “important” ones. Go use the budget tool.
The Sheriff contract
The biggest single expense in our budget is the contract with the Anoka County Sheriff for police service in Nowthen. In 2026 this single line item cost $527,975. We are already contracting for the fewest hours possible, and this is as small as the contract can get with Anoka County. The city previously spoke with the City of Ramsey to see what contracting with them would cost; it was more than our Sheriff contract. The city also looked at the cost of standing up its own police force. That too was far more expensive. Just last month our city clerk contacted the City of St. Francis to determine whether we might be able to contract with them for police service at a cheaper rate than Anoka County. Just like with Ramsey, contracting with St. Francis would be far more expensive than contracting with Anoka County. See the record.
The realistic options, then, are either to contract with Anoka County for what we have, or to not have any contract or police force whatsoever. Anoka County Sheriff would continue to respond to emergency calls, but the city would not have dedicated patrol cars, and if no patrol cars were nearby when the emergency call came in, it could be a long wait for a response. This is an option, but it would come at the cost of objectively worse public safety with slower emergency response times.
Wages and salaries
The next-largest parts of our budget are wages and salaries. If you combined all wages and salaries from all departments together (public works, administration, office staff, council, fire department) it would actually make up the biggest part of our budget. The total amount budgeted for wages in these departments for 2026 is $912,220. If you review the rates we pay, they are right in line with what neighboring municipalities pay. In 2025 and 2026 the city raised pay scales and instituted a step system for raises. The purpose of this was to make wages and salary a more predictable budget line item, to reward longevity with the city and experience in their roles, and to make raises more fair and predictable for staff and not subject to the whims of the current council.
It is easy to point at wages and cast them as an easy place to cut, but the cost of doing that would be higher turnover, with many of our current staff quitting. The city currently has excellent staff and leadership. They are not perfect and do make mistakes and might not be able to instantly provide an answer to every one of your questions, but they are pretty damn good and are only getting better. A city's staff only gets to a point where mistakes are rare, and any staff person can provide you an instant answer to your question, through experience and repetition. Cutting wages by even a very steep 10% would only result in savings of $91,222 to the 2026 budget. This is not an insignificant amount of money, but it is not enough to catch up on road projects. In the long run, high turnover would almost certainly cost the city more than it saved from painful 10% salary reductions, through repeated hiring and training costs. Not only would it cost more, but it would also result in worse service from those employees due to lack of experience and training.
Debt service
The next-highest category of yearly spending for the city is debt service. In 2026 this amounted to $488,413 in the budget. This debt is something Nowthen is legally obligated to pay. This debt was not incurred through irresponsible spending, but through necessary and strategic bonding for infrastructure and equipment. You can read here the explanation on bonding and why most cities do it. You can also read here what the city has bonded for over the years. A basic summary of what purchases make up our debt: roads and vehicles.
Adding it up
With just these three categories — wages, debt service, and the Sheriff contract — we are at $1,928,608. Aside from salary and wages, the rest of the spending for our public works budget (think maintenance, supplies, contract services) is $213,335. The rest of the budget for our fire department aside from salaries is $115,400. Budget categories get smaller and smaller from there, but they are also necessary and important things that cannot be cut: planning and zoning, professional services like legal and engineering, parks, elections, and more. Just the categories I put numbers to — salaries, the Sheriff contract, debt service, fire department, and public works — amount to $2,257,343. The 2026 Nowthen certified levy is $2,332,787. Here is a far more detailed breakdown of revenue, funds, and spending the city does each year. I encourage you to go look at this and think about where the city could possibly cut enough to either cut taxes or spend more on roads.
＋－So the budget is basically five line items?click to expand
Effectively, for the part residents can feel. The five categories above — wages across every department, the Sheriff contract, debt service, the fire department, and public works — come to $2,257,343 against a certified levy of $2,332,787. That is nearly the whole levy before you get to anything anyone would call discretionary. Everything that is left — the audit, elections, insurance, building inspection, the things a city is legally required to do — is real money, but it is not where a road program hides.
That covers why cuts alone will not free up enough tax dollars to provide relief. The next, even more painful subject is raising more through a higher levy — and the math behind the “grow the tax base” argument you hear at every development hearing.
Read Part 2: What saying no to development actually costs →