Becker County sets preliminary tax levy at nine percent
News | Published on September 23, 2025 at 1:46pm EDT | Author: frazeevergas
0By Robert Williams
Editor
Becker County set a preliminary property tax levy increase of nine percent on Tuesday for payable taxes in 2026, according to Auditor-Treasurer Mary Hendrickson.
“Well, I don’t think anyone is excited about a nine percent increase; that’s for sure,” Commissioner Barry Nelson said. “I truly believe we will be a little bit lower, not significantly lower, but we will be a bit lower than this on our final.”
Commissioner Phil Hansen said he would not support nine percent.
“I don’t know where we can get it from here,” said Hansen. “We’ve given our department heads a lot of leeway to come up with these budgets, but nine percent is not acceptable to me.”
Hansen wants department heads to go back to their budgets and find ways to cut the proposed levy.
“This is not acceptable to taxpayers of Becker County,” Hansen said. “We’ve got three months to get this in place and I’m suggesting our department heads find a way to get some cost savings to our taxpayers.”
All commissioners supported the resolution to set the preliminary mark, but were all vocal in the numbers being too high.
“I don’t like it either, but if you look at where we’re at as a county, as a state, I don’t care if it’s government or it’s private industry and I agree with you Phil. It’s too high,” said Commissioner Richard Vareberg. “When I look at my own business and what it costs me now to operate compared to what it cost me before COVID—inflation, there’s so many things. Health insurance, wages, there are so many things that go into this. I don’t know that you’re just going to be able to tell people to go ahead and make some cuts and save this money. That’d be nice if we could. I don’t know like where any of it is. If you talk to any big business owner everybody is having the same problem we are. I don’t like it, but I don’t see any way around it. The county has to run, one way or another.”
Nelson noted his goal is to get the levy increase down to 7.8 percent.
Higher costs on health insurance premiums and pay increases for county employees are two reasons for the inflated percentage.
Preliminary levies are typically set at higher numbers as they can only be adjusted by lowering before the final number is agreed upon.
“I wouldn’t support this today,” said Nelson.
Chairman David Meyer agreed and reiterated the board’s hopes that there will be a reduction of the levy in the near future.
If the levy stays at nine percent it will be an increase of $30,576,280 from 2025.