Saginaw voters will have a chance to decide if the city will continue to have a unique property tax cap system.
The city council voted unanimously Monday night to place a proposal on the ballot, the eighth attempt at getting rid of the tax cap.
Saginaw is the only city in America that has a hard limit on the amount of property tax it can collect each year. In 1979, voters approved a hard limit of $3.8 million in property tax revenue the city could collect from residents.
City leaders and a local grassroots movement, Restore Saginaw, want the tax cap gone, saying it lowers property values and infrastructure spending.
A small group of Saginaw residents cheered after the board voted to place the tax cap on the ballot at the Anderson Enrichment Center, where the city council meeting was held.
“You could have a significant investment in property, increase the overall value in the city, and not see a dime of new tax revenue from that, so you're not getting that pay off,” said City Manager Tim Morales after the meeting.
Morales says removing the tax cap would mostly help the city in the long-term. He says the city would have only made an estimated $600,000 off property taxes this fiscal year if there was no cap in place.
“But $600,000 more today could be four more firefighters or four more police officers,” he said. “In the long term though… you could see substantial funds as you see development in the city.”
The question to eliminate the tax cap has been on the ballot seven times in the last 47 years and each time residents have voted to keep the cap in place. Seventy-four percent of voters voted to keep the cap in 2009, the last time it was on the ballot.
Adan Mosqueda operates Sis-N-Bros Tacos in Saginaw. At a local farmer’s market, he said the current property tax rate is reasonable.
"Being a property owner in the city of Saginaw I would probably vote to keep it," Mosqueda said. "It's hard enough to pay bills let alone property taxes, so if property taxes went up it would be a little more of a struggle for many people, I'm sure."
He added that he was happy with the way the city was currently run.
“Road work, infrastructure work, water lines, mains, meters, everything's being worked on currently,” he added.
A state House bill to remove local governments ability to place hard caps on property taxes was introduced by Amos O’Neal, D-Saginaw, in Feb. 2025 but has yet to gain traction in the state House.
