Coming up on KCCI 8 News Close Up, Iowa lawmakers have wrapped up their work for the year, passing major changes to property taxes. Now local leaders are sorting out what that could mean for the services you rely on. With those additional caps, it’s going to be very difficult to maintain our service levels from an infrastructure standpoint, what it may do is it could eliminate certain projects. It could delay certain projects. And with summer around the corner, *** new warning about what’s in your water. All three of those water sources at Fleer Drive are over the safe drinking water standard, high nitrates, and rising demand, what it means for your family and what leaders say comes next. You’re watching KCCI 8 News. Close up. Good morning. Thanks for joining us for KCCI 8 News Close Up. I’m chief political reporter Amanda Rooker. Well, last weekend, Iowa lawmakers packed months of unfinished business into *** final overnight stretch to end the 2026 legislative session, racing to the finish line after more than 30 hours inside the same building, gaveling out after finally passing *** property tax deal that was two years in the making. Cheers broke out as *** new property tax bill finally reached the House floor. *** major step towards closing out the 2026 session, but getting there took nearly two full days of nonstop work and months of negotiations behind the scenes. The wee hours is how it ends every year, and that’s OK because it’s sitting here saying how do we make sure that there’s property tax relief? How do we ensure that our communities are safer from habitual offenders. Republican state senator Mike Busillo says this is what they’ll take back to voters, including *** push. On public safety, tougher penalties for repeat offenders, and tightening bail rules, especially for people accused of more serious crimes. When we started the session, we laid out *** few priorities that I think that we made some tremendous strides in looking at some of our tough on crime packages to make sure Iowa’s *** safe place. Lawmakers also signed off on *** wide range of other policies in those final hours, from new funding for. Quality projects to specialized care for sexual assault survivors to *** new tax on vape and nicotine products to fund pediatric cancer research, but not every priority made it across the finish line. Lawmakers did not pass any new limits on eminent domain for carbon capture pipelines. House Speaker Pat Grassley says their work on property rights didn’t make it through the Senate. We share your frustration that we’re unable to. Something, but that doesn’t mean that that’s something our caucus won’t continue to fight for as we move forward. Bouslo says Senate Republicans could not find consensus. One person doesn’t get *** bill passed. It takes 2651 in the governor’s signature. Overall, Democrats argue the session fell short on the issues they say they hear about most. Unfortunately they’ve done nothing during the session. I was hoping we’d see something on affordability, maybe, you know, putting more money into public education and We didn’t see that Iowa House Minority Leader Brian Meyer also questioning the process and the pace. The reality is that we’re all going on very little sleep, and it makes absolutely no sense that this is how you make laws for the state. Still, Republicans say the long hours. were worth it to get their priorities across the finish line. We’ve done *** lot of great things. Property taxes is going to be something that everyone is going to be proud to go back and campaign and say we protected homeowners. After more than 30 hours inside the statehouse, lawmakers are done. What they decided here is just getting started. So now the big question is what does this massive change to Iowa’s property tax system actually mean for Iowans and their communities. It was an 82 page bill, so there’s *** lot to sort through. Joining us this morning, we have Matt McCoy, chair of the Polk County Board of Supervisors, and Indianola Mayor Steve Richardson. Thanks for being here. Thank you very much for having us. Well, Steve, I want to start with you. There are obviously *** lot of changes in this legislation. Um, for Iowans who are watching who want to know what does this mean for my local community, what are some of the things that, you know, are sticking out to you? Well, Amanda, I think the first thing we have to look at is the fact that House File 718 is still in effect, and they did not take portions of that out of this legislation. So House File 718 for the city of Indianola, for instance, we ended up cutting 7 full-time positions, 4 in the police department. Uh, 2 or 3 in culture and recreation and 1 in communication. So we actually had some significant changes from our full-time staff, and we’re not, we, we are lean anyway as far as staff is concerned. So it is going to make an impact. It’s going to make uh longer hours for fewer employees. The other thing I would say too is that we have House File 718 has caused us to have fewer hours in our library. The library is now closed on Sundays. Uh, we’ve shortened the hours up quite *** bit. Um, the wellness campus is not open on Sundays either, and so it’s also shortened hours. Uh, Things like parks, we are mowing it fewer times *** year based on the contracts we have with certain individuals. So really what it comes down to is essential services, what people think essential services are and what the public wants to pay for. People my age think *** lot of times essential services are police, fire, EMS, those kinds of things, but then you talk to the young families in our communities, especially the ones I’ve talked with last fall on the, on the campaign trail. They want parks. They want libraries. They want walking trails. They want things that are close amenities to them. And so, It really depends on what you want. With that said, um, no two properties are the same, and so you might have *** property and I might have *** property next to each other, and those tax dollars may be different for each one of us because of various factors. When you really get down to property taxes, it’s levy, the tax levy, the assessments that that you’ve been given for the value of your home, and the rollback, and *** lot of people don’t understand what the rollback really is, and that is *** key point and the bill that was passed just this last week. Um, really doesn’t address the rollback situation much. Um, so what we’re gonna see is there’s *** lot of unknowns right now with that bill because there’s so many things in it. It’s 80 some pages that you mentioned, and it’s, uh, very difficult to get all through and, and people are still trying to sort it out. And so what I would tell you is that the 2% hard cap on the consolidated general fund levy is probably the biggest factor for its communities, for cities, because that affects all of those things I just talked about, um, whether it’s police, fire, EMS, library, wellness campus, those kinds of things all fall under that. What I would like to say though is I do want to thank our legislators that we had conversations with and I personally was involved in some of those conversations with Senator Clement, Senator Dawson, Senator Sinclair, uh, Representative Nordman, Speaker Grassley, and, and my representative, Representative Bowden. We had *** lot of discussions about the effects that these would have this 2% cap would have if it was *** solid 2% cap on every levee. Because what we’re seeing in our not only in Indianola, *** town of 16,000, but we’re seeing it in small communities. Talk to the uh uh city clerk in Milo, for instance, uh, population of 787, and their, their new money is under *** 2% hard cap on all, all things would be less than $3000. So how do you pay for new gravel? How do you pay for and, and gas prices that have gone up $1? How do you pay for the rock that you might put on? When you seal coat streets, all the things that go into that, you have one full-time person, *** half-time person, and then the city clerk. That’s all you’ve got. So what do you cut in those kinds of situations with 2% hard cap? Luckily they listened to the different lobbies that were involved there and they only put that 2% hard cap on the consolidated General Fund, which allows us then to have things like insurance costs which are increasing anywhere from 10% to 20%, health insurance meaning you also have property and casualty insurance that’s increasing significantly too. Um, and one thing I would mention too that *** lot of people tend to forget about your property taxes and, and, and your mortgage that you have. If you have An escrow account and your insurance is rolled into that. I now pay more in my home insurance than I do personal property taxes. My home insurance has doubled in the last two years. I was in the top 5 for natural disasters and so *** lot of insurance companies have really cut *** lot of people off and you’ve had to go find new insurance and so. You know when my insurance increased $1200 in two years’ time and you look at your if you are an escrow account, you look at your thing, you go, oh my gosh, I increased my taxes. Well, it’s insurance in *** lot of those cases too, so there’s *** lot of things there. I have *** lot of follow-ups for you, but I wanna also talk about how things we’ve talked about smaller counties, talked about new growth. Talk to me about Polk County, you know. We already saw changes to the property tax system before. Now with *** 2% cap in place, what types of cuts are you expecting? So first of all, I’d say, you know, we knew this was not *** secret. We knew the legislature chose this as their top priority. So for the past two years we’ve been positioning ourselves at the county to prepare for this. One of the things we did across the board is we asked for *** 1% voluntary reduction in. Hard costs for each department in the county and they did that. In addition, we’re looking for opportunities to collaborate and cooperate. For example, we were able to save more than $30 million by combining with the state medical examiner’s office, which is now in Ankeny, and just that savings alone was *** tax avoidance of more than $30 million plus ongoing expenses of about $1.5 million *** year. So we’re looking for those kinds of opportunities. We’re going out, we’re rebidding things, and then we have *** position review committee as every new job opens up, as somebody leaves, retires, or finds another form of employment, we go in and we make an evaluation. Do we need to absolutely fill this job because we know if we can control our growth in full-time equivalent positions, we can control *** lot of our. Costs in county government. So we’re taking, we’re taking proactive steps to work together. I think there’s going to be great discussions that occur, for example, around law enforcement. We see opportunities to partner with smaller communities to take over their law enforcement as *** county entity and have them pay us to do to do the law enforcement for their communities. So we see lots of opportunities through 2080 agreements and collaboration to work together we’re gonna have to find more efficient and effective ways to deliver services. One thing we’re committed to in Pope County, we’re committed to not cutting essential services to people that rely on our services, and *** lot of poor and marginalized individuals rely on county government, and we want to be there. We want to be that solid part. For them to perform those essential services. Steve, we only have *** little bit of time left, but I want to quickly ask you if Indianola has already made all of those cuts, you’re trying not to touch things like essential services. I mean, where do you cut next if you have to? It’s *** great question. And, and when Matt and I had this conversation before we came on the air, you know, you have union contracts and things that are coming along, and those are, you know, running at various percentages and. And again, I don’t know what’s going to happen the next year with uh your insurance costs. I, I anticipate those to go up greatly. The one thing that we’ve done and we did *** number of years ago to Matt’s point about sharing. Way back 30 years ago, we partnered with Norwalk, Carlisle, and Indianola and started our own private health insurance plan. We, we’ve all split into our own separate ways now, but we are self-funded in our insurance and we’re able to give our employees 3 months of insurance holidays. And so those are the kinds of things that sharing does happen and does make things work well. We are going to look at those opportunities as well, but to your point, that’s where you are. 60% of our budget is fire, EMS and police, and so. You know, I think all things are important. The library is important to families with kids and, and our trails and our wellness campus and all those things too. So it’s gonna be ***, it’s gonna be *** challenge. One last thing I would mention though, TIFF, under this new legislation, uh, you’ll see *** lot of economic development projects come to *** halt because. You’re taking out the 540 school levy out of that and you’re also going to see that there’s *** lot of uncertainty about what’s in that legislation for TIFF, and so you’re seeing *** pause to that. I think City Manager Sanderson made that comment, and you’re going to see *** lot more of that simply because of the fact that people are uncertain. I’ll go back to Small towns don’t have growth. They don’t have the growth. Well, that is all the time that we have for this conversation. Thank you both for being here this morning. Thank you very much for the time. Appreciate it. Well, still to come on Close Up, will these new changes actually lower Iowan’s property tax bills? Stay with us. Close Up. We’ll be right back after the break. Iowa just passed sweeping property tax reform, *** promise that state lawmakers have been making for the past 2 years. The question now, what does this practically mean for Iowa taxpayers? Joining us now, we have Chris Hagno, the president of Iowans for Tax Relief. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. I’m glad to be here. Well, your group has been pushing for, you know, specifically property tax cuts for *** while. There was *** lot of. Debate over this. The main piece of this, though, there are lots of changes is *** hard cap. Practically, will we see lower property tax bills for homeowners? Yeah, you’re gonna see that for three main reasons. One is when we talk about *** 2% revenue cap, that’s slowing down the rate of growth in local government budgets, and they have other revenue sources besides property taxes to draw on. As well, so this is just ***, ***, *** slowing down of the future rate of growth, but also with the changes to the school funding formula where we won’t pay as much out of property taxes for our public, you know, for our K-12 education system, and then the expanded homeowners, uh, credit for your homestead. So there’s multiple reasons why you’ll see an impact now and then you’ll see that not grow as fast into the future. I know it’s hard to determine just because cities and counties are are different all over the state, but for *** homeowner who wants to know what can I practically expect for my tax bill, I mean how much relief are we talking here? And, and that’s the hard part about all this because every home is different. Every, we all have multiple taxing jurisdictions, your city, your county, your school, your, so it, it is all different and we’re gonna try and work through. All of that and what that means you almost have to get in at *** at *** per parcel level and run those numbers, but it will be meaningful as you see cities and counties, especially across the state, trim back and start setting priorities. That is how you get relief is by local government spending less. We didn’t end up seeing *** change to the rollback or, you know, there’s *** 10%, I believe, you know, change to. To tax exemptions, but does your group feel like this is *** first step and there needs to be more, or are you content with where things are right now? Iowans for Tax Relief has, has believed that the rollback system is *** good taxpayer protection because *** lot of times we see an assessment valuation go up and that shocks us, but the rollback insulates us from having to pay that. So we’d like to keep that system. There are other ways to do it, but that’s not *** necessary. Next step for us on rollback, I think there will be, we’ve been having property tax conversations in the state of Iowa for 100 years. I doubt that this is going to be the last one, but this is *** really good step towards saving Iowa taxpayers some money. We just heard from some city and county leaders concerns that this could impact, you know, local services, even things, you know, like public safety. And what is your expectation about what these changes could mean for public services? Well, I would hope that it means that we’re gonna save some money on that because that’s the whole point, right? Is asking governments to set priorities to separate wants versus needs. Not everything that *** local government does is necessary. It might be good, it might be valuable, but what we want to really is reframe this whole question is make Iowa taxpayers, make Iowa family budgets what is most important, not their government’s budget. Now we only have *** little bit of time left, but another thing that we heard from lawmakers was wanting to make this whole system more transparent and predictable for taxpayers. Is there anything in this legislation you think will do that? Yeah, there is. There’s the, the notification statements which has the last year has been kind of confusing, and now they’re going to clean that up and they’ll be delivered electronically. We’re still not sure exactly how those statements will be delivered, but the fundamental piece of information that we need is not. Rollback formulas or millage rates or any of these other things, we just want to know what the bill is. How much am I gonna be asked to pay next year and that piece of information if we can get that to individuals so that they can make those decisions and hopefully use that to be more involved in their local government, which is the key to all of this is getting more Iowans engaged at the local level so they get the government they deserve. Well, thank you so much for joining us this morning. We really appreciate it. Thank you. When we return, nitrates are already high in central Iowa’s rivers, raising some new concerns about drinking water and possible restrictions this summer. We hear from our chief investigative reporter on the issue next. Welcome back to Close Up. Central Iowans are being asked to conserve water because of high nitrate levels in some of the main sources for our drinking water. Chief investigative reporter Suzanne Banky looks into the newly approved $25 million in state funding for Central Iowa waterworks and revisions to the water use plan. Nitrate levels in the Des Moines and Raccoon Rivers continue to run high. We are seeing water quality and quantity issues not only in Iowa but across the country. KCCI investigates got test results that show the Des Moines River is at 11 mg per liter so far this month. All three of those water sources at Fleer Drive are over the safe drinking water standard of 10 mg per liter and have been for some time. Last summer, those two main sources of drinking water also had high levels of the contaminant nitrate. I think it’s important to understand that we are not starting the summer in as good of *** position as we were in last summer. Central Iowa Waterworks revised its water use plan after lessons from last summer. It includes *** stage zero for ongoing water use education. Stages 1 and 2 are roughly the same as *** 25% and *** 50% voluntary reduction. And stage 3 is *** full lawn watering ban. But *** few notable changes come at this point. Sod and seed could still continue under guidance provided by Iowa State University for wise watering of those resources, and then sports turf could still be irrigated to promote player safety and plant health. And then splash pads could continue at the discretion of the cities who manage and maintain those splash pads. Water officials provided more details about the $25 million in state funding approved by lawmakers. The goal would be to construct an expanded nitrate removal facility. It’d be at the same location. The cost of construction is estimated at $23 million. It truly depends on what type of facility will be designed. And we have our chief investigative reporter Suzanne Banky with us this morning. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Now in your story, you talk about the $25 million to Central Iowa Waterworks. Now that is *** big, *** part of the big announcement that the governor made on water quality earlier this month. What are the largest pieces from that announcement that Iowans should know about and the impact that those pieces could have on water quality? There are *** lot of different pieces in that $319 million that the governor talked about, but the two main ones that I’ll. Point out are one, the $25 million *** one-time appropriation to Central Iowa Waterworks, that’s to expand the nitrate removal facility and then also $10 million one-time funding again to create something called the rural Iowa Infrastructure Fund that would be *** very low loan, uh, low interest rate loans that’s hard to get out there, um, for rural communities to make water and wastewater infra. Structure improvements. Now going back to the $25 million that you mentioned, we also just heard from Central Iowa Waterworks about issues this summer, so that funding is not going to immediately fix some of the issues that we’re expecting right now. No, uh, the $25 million is for upgrading and expanding the nitrate removal facility. Whenever construction starts on that, that’s 3 years out, so that appropriation does not address. Anything that’s happening right now. Now, waterworks officials are saying, you know, we’re using all the tools in our toolbox to keep that nitrate level in the treated drinking water under 10 mg per liter, and that’s the EPA standard. Um, you know, other things that I would point out would be, uh, these nitrate levels have been high since January. That nitrate removal facility, you know, as of as of this day that we’re talking, is 115 days that it’s been running so far. This year, so we’re not starting the summer in *** good in *** good spot and we have less than *** minute, but what are you hearing from water quality advocates about what else they want to see? Um, one of the big things after, uh, the announcement about the water quality funding was great. It’s great to have this concentration and focus on water quality improvements and initiatives and efforts, but *** lot of it’s coming at the end of the cycle, right? Like why, how can we. Address the issue at the start before it gets downstream and becomes the bigger issue in treating it for our drinking water. They want some more preventative measures. Yeah, I mean, it’s conservation. It’s looking at different uses *** lot. There’s *** lot to unpack with that, but yes, more at the beginning stages than at the water treatment stage. Well, Suzanne, thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it. Thank you. And Close up we’ll be right back after this break. Stay with us. Thank you for joining us for KCCI 8 News Close Up. We’ll see you back here next Sunday. Have *** great day.

Close Up: Tax reform ends session, city leaders brace for change

Iowa lawmakers concluded the 2026 legislative session with property tax reforms, while Central Iowans are asked to conserve water due.

Updated: 12:01 PM CDT May 10, 2026

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On this week’s Close Up, Iowa lawmakers have wrapped up their work for the year, including major reform to property taxes. We sit down with leaders in Polk and Warren counties on the changes they’re preparing to make, and what it practically means for taxpayers. Plus, central Iowans are being asked to conserve water as high nitrate levels affect major drinking water sources.Watch the full episode in the video player above. » Subscribe to KCCI’s YouTube page» Download the free KCCI app to get updates on the go: Apple | Google Play

On this week’s Close Up, Iowa lawmakers have wrapped up their work for the year, including major reform to property taxes.

We sit down with leaders in Polk and Warren counties on the changes they’re preparing to make, and what it practically means for taxpayers.

Plus, central Iowans are being asked to conserve water as high nitrate levels affect major drinking water sources.

Watch the full episode in the video player above.

» Subscribe to KCCI’s YouTube page

» Download the free KCCI app to get updates on the go: Apple | Google Play