Interesting and informative letter from Cary Conger

This letter pertains to two charts that I provided to Curtis just for information. He asked that I write an explanation of the charts. First of all, I am a data person and like to make charts and see if they say anything.

Re the City Tax Rates: When I moved here in 2005, I learned in the Des Moines Register that Sac City had the 4th highest tax rate of the 948 cities in Iowa . I thought that was a disgrace. Between them, former City Administrator Jeff Fiegenschuh and current City Administrator Adam Ledford have lowered Sac City ’s taxes $3.34 per $1,000 assessed valuation which is a lot and yet Sac City still has the 12th highest tax rate of the now 949 cities in the State. I wanted to see how Sac City compares to those comparable sized cities on the population chart. As you can see, Audubon and Pocahontas are nearly in the same situation as Sac City . With the notable exception of Milford , the taxable valuations are within $17 million of Sac City ’s. Where does Sac City seem out of line with the majority of those cities? Debt levy (and even as a former Council member, I have to admit I don’t recall what for—certainly don’t see a lot of improvements being made around the City) and to some extent for Employee Benefits although three of cities even levy more for this than does Sac City.

Re the population chart: I was curious as to how the next five closest cities smaller and larger than Sac City located north of Interstate 80 and west of Interstate 35 compare and have compared over the past century. All the cities were growing until 1950 when Onawa reached its peak population. Three were still growing as recently as 2000. The median year for peak population was 1976 which means in general these cities as a group have been losing population for 33 years. If you look at the Sac County and its adjacent counties you will note that three of the eight counties reached their peak in 1900!!! Sac County reached its peak population in 1930 (nearly 80 years ago!). The two largest counties, Buena Vista and Carroll, reached their peak in 1960. Sac City and Sac County are right in the middle of a larger area that’s in serious trouble, population-wise. I saw the last couple of weeks in the Des Moines Register where Sac County is one of five counties with the greatest population (might have been percentage) of people age 65 and older. We’re not unique in population loss. For that matter northwest Iowa is not unique. For some reason, the western portions of all the Midwest states are losing population. Do I have an answer as to how to turn the population loss around? No, and apparently no one else does either.
I also did a chart with same comparable cities on numbers of employees and their wages. Those are eye openers. They are also too complicated in present format to share at the moment.
Cary Conger