Mayor’s Minutes: Brooklyn Park’s Hollies Winston
Brooklyn Park Mayor Hollies Winston laid out a handful of legislative agenda items as he met with CCX Media’s Dave Kiser recently.
Brooklyn Park Mayor Hollies Winston
Winston said city leaders are keen on helping grow the city’s tax base.
“We’re now the fifth-largest city, tons of diversity. When we benchmark ourselves, say, compared to Bloomington with commercial property tax values, we are at $2 million. Bloomington is sitting at $5.5 million,” said Winston. “That directly affects property taxes for our residents in Brooklyn Park. We’ve got to cover that gap.”
One way he proposes is to seek state designation for some tax increment financing for development along the proposed light rail line into the city, which Winston said the city could use to help promote and develop hundreds of acres of commercial land along Highway 610.
City leaders feel like they can promote that land more effectively if tax incentives would lure more businesses–specifically in the biotech industry–to Brooklyn Park.
Another area of state funding that Winston wants the city to continue pursuing is money to pay for an expansion of the Central Fire Station.
“We want to build them out to give them the safety, the equipment, the facilities that they need,” said Winston. He feels like more property and other tax revenue from bigger companies in commercial development will help the city pay for public safety needs in the long run.
“Public safety takes up 55-60 percent of our budget. It really should take up 25 to 35 percent, but because we’ve got that gap, we have a smaller budget,” he said. “So this is to shore those areas up, to bring the tax revenue we need.”
