As much as I like my pithy slogan, it isn’t quite accurate. Under the 7-mill “public safety” millage on the November ballot you will pay more – under the ruse of paying for fire/emergency medical services (EMS) and police – but you’ll get the same crap service from the Oakland County Sheriff as you always have. Even though speeding and traffic enforcement are two of the biggest areas of concern for residents and the city council, the Oakland County Sheriff has written only 24 traffic citations in the first six months of 2026. And our sheriff liaison assured the city council that the sheriff will not be doing any more traffic enforcement than they have been – because they’re super busy with other sheriff-type stuff throughout Independence Township. Too bad, so sad for you, Clarkston!
Clarkston city manager Jonathan Smith is hellbent on painting lipstick on this pig of a millage proposal by using money the city supposedly doesn’t have enough of to hire some “professional” to convince you that paying the city more money for police, fire, and EMS service – even though the police service sucks – is somehow a good thing. Smith was admonished by city attorney Gerry Fisher that he must be “factual” in his quest to “educate” us country bumpkins that paying more taxes for the city to waste isn’t as effing stupid as we think it is. Smith says the city must have people that are skilled in this to assist the city in getting the word out on what this really means.
Dude, we know what it means – the city wants us to give it a free pass to raise our taxes by 62% whenever it wants!
Anyway, in honor of the city manager, I thought it would be a fun exercise to do a Q & A using your city officials’ own words from the August 10, 2026, city council meeting when they voted to put a “public safety” millage proposal on the ballot that will – not might – raise your overall Clarkston taxes by 62% to 18.4107 mills within the next five years (or sooner) along with my own commentary. And should the city publish any “facts” it wants you to know, I’ll be here to tell you what they’re not telling you (as I always do).
The quotes and public official commentary in this post were taken from the informal transcript that I prepare after city council meetings and publish on the Clarkston Sunshine website. It’s close to a verbatim transcript but I’m not a court reporter and don’t certify my transcripts as official. You can listen to a recording of the August 10, 2026, city council discussion about the “public safety” millage by clicking here and I encourage everyone to do so. If you notice an error in the statements I’ve attributed to any city official, please let me know and I’ll correct it.
One additional note – the city council jumped around when talking about what this 7-mill tax increase means. I’m letting you know upfront that I’ve moved what was said to the applicable sections below, so for example, one comment could have been made ten minutes apart from a later or earlier one. If you want to hear the discussion as it occurred in sequence and context, I encourage you to listen to the meeting recording.
Here are all the questions I’ll be answering in my Q & A, but due to the overall length, I’ll be posting it in three parts. The questions covered in this post are in the darker blue.
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- What is a “public safety” millage?
- How do we pay for police, fire, and EMS now?
- How much of a millage tax increase is Clarkston proposing?
- Does the city really expect me to pay 7 mills more for bad police service?
- Did the city explore less expensive alternatives for police, fire, and EMS?
- The city says if I vote “yes,” my taxes will only increase by 1 mill, not 7 mills – what’s true?
- Why won’t the city make a firm promise to keep the tax increase to 1 mill for the next budget year?
- How did the city decide it needed 7 mills for “public safety”?
- The city promises there will be a public hearing before it raises our taxes, so that’s helpful, right?
- What happens if we vote “no” on the “public safety” millage?
- In conclusion . . .
Let’s begin at the beginning.
Question – What is a “public safety” millage?
The Michigan legislature limits how much cities, townships, and villages can tax us in general millage because let’s face it, if they could ask for half your paycheck in taxes, they absolutely would. The more they have, the more they spend. It’s never enough for these people.
By law, local governments are allowed to tax us up to 20 mills in general millage. Clarkston’s charter (our city’s constitution) limits Clarkston government to 15 mills in general millage. The city council could ask us to vote on a charter change to tax us up to the 20-mill limit, but it hasn’t done so. (Probably because it wants 7 mills from you, not 5.)
A “public safety” millage is a loophole that allows local governments to ask for even more taxes from us above the general millage cap so they can shift the obligation to pay for public safety-type things – such as police, fire, and EMS – out of their precious general fund money (where most of your general millage tax money goes) over to a special “public safety” millage pot of money. This frees up more general fund money for the local governments to use (and waste) on other things. This means Clarkston can add 7 “public safety” mills to the general millage we’re already sending to city hall to run the city.
Don’t be fooled by the 11.4107 general millage number the city likes to throw around – you are still taxed at the equivalent of the maximum 15-mill rate. 11.4107 is the present value of the 15 mills Clarkston voters approved back in 1992 when Clarkston became a city. The Headlee Amendment to the Michigan Constitution requires that Clarkston’s millage charges be “rolled back” every year to the dollar value equivalent of those 15 mills at the time the millage was approved plus a modest annual increase for the rate of inflation. Clarkston taxpayers are currently taxed at the maximum rate allowed by the charter – and the city manager admitted that at page 52 in his annual budget presentation available in the May 26, 2026, city council packet.
The purpose of the Headlee rollback is to give Clarkston government the benefit of the bargain it struck with the voters and is designed to decrease every year. The same thing happens to you – every year, $1 doesn’t buy as much as it used to because of inflation and you deal with it. Relatively speaking, you are giving – and Clarkston is receiving – the value of the 15 original mills. The city council could ask us to vote on what is known as a “Headlee override,” which would bring the 15-mill value up from the 11.4107 mills to 15 mills at today’s dollar value, but it hasn’t done so. (Probably because it wants 7 mills from you, not 3.5893 mills, which is what it would get with a Headlee override – the difference between 15 mills and 11.4107 mills.)
Have you noticed when these “public safety” millages are up for renewal, governments are always asking for millage increases and threaten dire consequences if voters say “no”? That’s because they’ve blown through the general fund money that was freed up by the “public safety” millage and would have to make some actual cuts if they didn’t get the millage renewal/increase.
So, it’s best not to let this nonsense take root by voting “no” the first time you’re asked to consider a “public safety” millage.
Question – How do we pay for police, fire, and EMS now?
Police, fire, and EMS costs are paid out of the 11.4107 general millage money as almost everything else is. Tax revenue in the approved budget is $745,146, which is a lot of money when you consider that amount must be paid by only a handful of Main Street businesses and approximately 880 people living in approximately 400 homes and apartments. (Renters are part of the 880 population but pay their part of the general millage to their landlords every time they pay their rent.) The city also gets other revenue from its share of the state sales tax kickbacks, fees, and other sources, bringing the total city revenue to $923,986 (taken from the approved budget). That’s a lot of money!
Most of that 11.4107 millage money is kept in what the city refers to as “the general fund.” Nice name, eh? It means the money can “generally” be used for anything the city wants. It divides the general fund up into different little pots of money that are assigned a budget line number, but money can be moved around between budget lines whenever the city wants. Think of it as “city fun money” to be used for any stupid expense Smith can convince the city council to authorize – including another giant $13,000 raise for himself. Or maybe more vacation and sick days. Or a bigger retirement match. Perhaps we can add another holiday for city employees because fourteen paid holidays surely isn’t enough, right? In fact, if you dig through the budget to find the very well-hidden expenses of maintaining our six employees, you’d learn that it costs approximately $369,176 for all those salaries, benefits, retirement savings, mandatory state and federal contributions, worker’s compensation, and mileage/conferences (based on the February 25, 2026 amended budget numbers). These spendthrifts even give a budget allowance for conferences to our Department of Public Works (DPW) employees! It’s only fair to say that some of the DPW wages are reimbursed by state highway funds, but even so, the $369,176 cost for keeping these employees amounts to about 5.5636 mills all on its own and eats up 49.5% of the tax revenue the residents and businesses pay to the city!
And that’s all that this “public safety” millage is about. The city wants more general fund fun money. Paying the increasing costs of police, fire, and EMS out of the general fund means having less fun money. But if it shifts all or most of those costs to you, the city will have an even larger pot of general fund fun money than it enjoys now. And while it’s true that the cost of fire, EMS, and horrid police service is rising, the city is asking taxpayers to shoulder the entire additional burden for those increases. It doesn’t even want to split the difference and ask for 3.5 mills in “public safety” millage and use 3.5 mills from the general fund.
That’s why I use quotes when referring to the “public safety” millage.
This isn’t about public safety at all – it’s about freeing up lots and lots of general fund fun money.
Question – How much of a millage tax increase is Clarkston proposing?
The proposal is for a 7 mill “public safety” millage. If you want to know how much more that 7 mills will cost you personally, look at the “taxable value” box on your tax bill and multiply it by .007 (because a mill is $1 for every thousand dollars in taxable value, expressed as .001 in decimal form). Smith likes to use the example of a home with a $160,000 taxable value, so let’s do that. Please note I’m just going to drop the cents from my calculations and use the whole dollar amounts without rounding.
Right now, the owners of a modest Clarkston home with $160,000 in taxable value are currently paying 11.4107 mills to Clarkston for the privilege of living in their own house. And it is a privilege, not a right, because if they didn’t give Clarkston its pound of flesh, the city would ask the county to foreclose and sell their home in a sheriff sale.
So, these homeowners pay $1,825 per year ($152 per month if you like to think of things that way) as their contribution for the 11.4107 general millage. If you increase the mills charged to those homeowners by 7 mills for the “public safety” millage, that’s an additional $1,120 more per year (or $93 more per month) for a total of $2,945 in taxes per year ($245 per month).
Smith is using some trickery to suggest those homeowners will “only” be paying $160 more if they vote yes on the “public safety” millage. I’ll explain why that claim is a load of cow manure later. And even if you think paying so much to Clarkston is OK, you have to factor in the additional property tax that homeowner pays to every other entity with its grubby little hands stretched out to get their piece of the pie. The city manager conveniently set that out in a handy dandy little chart on page 51 in his annual budget presentation available in the May 26, 2026 city council packet: 13 mills for schools, 3.1349 mills for the intermediate school district, 1.4747 mills for community college, 1.1521 mills for the library, .9407 mills for SMART busses, 3.9301 mills for Oakland County operations, and 2.0778 mills that Smith lumped together under a “county parks” heading (which includes Oakland County Parks and Recreation, Detroit Zoo, Huron Clinton Metropolitan Authority, Detroit Art Institute, and the Oakland County transit tax) – for a total of 25.7103 mills.
If you add Clarkston’s 11.4107 mills to that 25.7103 mill total, that homeowner with the $160,000 taxable value home is taxed at a rate of 37.121 mills or $5,939 per year ($494 a month) just for the privilege of living in their own home.
Kind of puts Smith’s b-b-but it’s only 1 mill more claim in perspective, doesn’t it? But it’s not 1 mill we’re talking about – it’s 7 mills. Paying 7 mills more increases the overall millage to 44.121 mills, which means the people who own this modest little home with a $160,000 taxable value will pay a whopping $7,059 per year in taxes (or $588 per month)! And if you’ve ever thought about selling your home, you need to multiply your state equalized value by .044121 to get an idea what your buyers will have to pay in taxes. Prepare to be shocked (because your potential buyers probably will be).
And let’s not forget the new and increased millage that will be on the November ballot along with Clarkston’s “public safety” millage. If these other proposals are approved, the Detroit Zoo millage will rise from .0935 mills to .1 mills and you’ll be paying a new .2 mills to support the Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History, the Detroit Historical Museum, the Dossin Great Lakes Museum, and other museums in Oakland and Wayne County.
At what point is it enough already?
Question – Does the city really expect me to pay 7 mills more for bad police service?
Yes they do, but probably not right away, and the 7 mills also includes the cost of fire and emergency medical service (EMS). But one thing is certain – if you vote “yes” on this moronic proposal, you will be taxed up to the full 7 mills whenever city council decides, in any amount city council decides – and you will have nothing more to say about it.
City attorney Gerry Fisher said: “What we’re talking about is the difference between the authorization and the levy. That’s a key difference. . . . what we’re talking about is the authorization that the people are approving is for seven mills. . . . in the first year or second year, there’s no obligation to levy the whole thing. . . . there’s no obligation to put the whole thing on the tax roll that people have to pay.”
Let me translate the lawyer-speak because Fisher threw out two terms – “authorization” and “levy.” If you vote “yes” on this garbage “public safety” millage proposal, you are authorizing the city to tax you 7 mills more. However, the city doesn’t have to levy (charge) you the whole 7 mills more right away, and it claims is isn’t going to – but it’s not making any promises, suckers.
Parts 2 and 3 will follow in separate posts.
Please vote “no” on the “public safety” millage proposal.