Duluth Council Approves Maximum Property Tax Levy For 2025

DULUTH, Minn. — Property owners in Duluth may be seeing a bit of relief come next tax season.

The city council has unanimously approved the mayor’s max levy proposal, just one part of the mayor’s 2025 budget. The proposal sets a maximum property tax levy at 1.85 percent, which according to the city, is equal the amount of new tax growth this year. For current property owners, this could mean your city property taxes will not increase next year.

“First of all, this is the first step in a twostep process. So, we must set the maximum property tax levy by the end of September. I recommended a 0% increase last night. For the first time in ten years, the city council adopted that by A90 unanimous vote. The second step then, will be adopting the final budget, and that must be done by the end of December. So, some of that is new commercial tax base. Some of that is residential. But 1.85% is actually pretty significant. Traditionally it’s more like about 1% or even under. So, we’re seeing some good tax base growth. And it’s one of the reasons that you’ll always hear me talk about developing our commercial tax base, because that’s where we get our most stable form of revenue for the city services,” said Duluth Mayor Roger Reinert.

Mayor Reinert does not expect another flat levy in his future budget cycles. Meanwhile Councilor Arik Forsman agrees that property owners deserve a break after repeated property tax increases. But he wants to remind everybody that levy’s pay for critical city services.

“As you try to be competitive, to make sure you’ve got talented police officers, firefighters, plow drivers, librarians, we are going to have to have costs go up in the future. But we want to take a breath when we’ve got those opportunities to do so. And this is one of those take a breath years where I think our property taxpayers are asking for some relief, and we’re delivering now,” said Councilman Arik Forsman, City of Duluth.

Forsman and Reinert also remind property owners that the city’s portion of property taxes only accounts for about a quarter of that bill. St. Louis County and the Duluth School District account for the rest.