Chaska adopted a tax levy increase of 15.88 percent on December 16, 2024, intended to maintain city services and facilitate current and future growth. Within that increase, 8.76 percent supports the baseline levy, 5.18 percent accounts for inflation and 3.58 percent facilitates new growth in the community.
This doesn’t mean the average resident’s taxes increased 15.88 percent — it is the percentage increase in Chaska’s levy amount, which is lower than previous years. Matt Podhradsky, Chaska city administrator, said many residents have reported increases closer to 5 to 7 percent.
“Just because the levy percentage goes up that much doesn’t mean that that’s what actually people will experience,” Podhradsky said. “Even with those changes in our tax levy, we’re still one of the lowest tax levies per capita in the Twin Cities.”
Resident Impact
Out of 84 cities in the Twin Cities metro, Podhradsky said Chaska comes in 62nd. He added that the impact is intended to be less burdensome on taxpayers as the community continues to grow — rather than current residents shouldering the expenses related to the expansion of services.
This allows the city to upgrade many of its facilities to match the current population without compromising quality.
“We want to make sure that we capture those dollars coming in, because we have additional services that we need to provide,” said Podhradsky. “We’re able to spread that across a much larger tax base than we were in the past.”
Not compromising safety
New growth required reevaluating existing facilities for potentially necessary upgrades. The city conducted a space needs analysis to determine where gaps existed to focus priorities effectively.
Public safety was a large target: The current police department space is about 8,000 square feet, but the analysis determined a department of its size serving a community like Chaska should have 35,000 to 40,000 square feet of space.
The fire department is also experiencing a sea change, similar to other Twin Cities suburbs. The former model places all firefighters on call; responders must leave their homes and drive to the station before heading to an emergency. Under the new structure, the fire department establishes duty crews which function like on-call shifts and the people working in these crews respond to a call directly from the station.
Response times under this model are “about four to four and a half 4 minutes because we’re right in the middle of the city,” Podhradsky said. “If we have to respond from our firefighters’ homes, come to the station and then go out again, those calls we’re getting upwards of nine to 10 minutes per call. So it has a significant impact.”
The former building did not have the space to accommodate sleeping quarters, kitchens and other requirements to house duty crews. Couple this with the significant space increase the police needed, and a new building became crucial. Construction began in 2024.
“We really felt it was critical that we had to deal with our core services first. Because, at the end of the day, policing and fire and plowing roads and being able to have reliable water and electricity and sewer, that had to be the priority,” he said.
A four-year plan
2025 is the third of a four-year plan implemented after the space needs analysis. The city chose this multi-year approach to reduce cost impact.
Every other year, the city will start a facility upgrade. The current schedule, based on priorities identified in the analysis, is:
- 2026: Municipal service building
- 2028: Chaska Library
- 2030: Chaska City Hall
“It just seemed like that was really the right threshold in order to be able to address the building needs that we have, but also keep in mind inflation in construction costs. Because the longer we stretch that program out, the more expensive it is to actually build those buildings,” said Chaska Mayor Taylor Hubbard. “It would be nice to say ‘Hey, we’re going to put this over 10 years,’ but it would’ve ended up costing us more in the long run as a community.”
The city researched how an average Chaska household would be impacted. The city’s median home value is $390,000 and research showed the four-year plan would increase taxes by $34 per month — less than a tank of gas. However, as new growth funded the project, that monthly increase dropped to $31.25 per month today.
Community feedback
The city worked with an agency to conduct a community survey, which Hubbard said the city is confident is a statistically sound data sample. During her 2024 campaign, she says door-knocking across the city yielded responses that generally aligned.
Residents who have lived in Chaska for under 15 years were typically unfazed by the tax increases. They used to live in areas in or outside of Minnesota, where city amenities didn’t match “the kind of that special, unique flavor that our town creates by having the amenities of a suburb,” said Hubbard.
Residents who have lived here for decades and folks on fixed incomes tended to bristle the most at the tax increases, which Hubbard acknowledged is understandable.
“Everybody wants to pay as little taxes as possible, right?” she said.
That said, she noted the city’s needs have grown. Many facilities were built when Chaska’s population was about 10,000—it’s now nearly triple that at 30,000. Highlighting that growth and why these changes are necessary is an important communication priority for the city.
“It seems like a big ask and a big lift to pay more to have proper facilities. But really, in the long scheme of things, our cities work more efficiently and better and that ends up saving money,” Hubbard said. “That’s what our role is and that’s what we’re trying to make sure: That we maintain for the community in the most cost-effective way possible.”
