Marietta Deputy Tax Administrator Bonnie Duff (left) and Marietta City Treasurer Cathy Harper listen as Regional Income Tax Agency representative Al Dolezal (right) gives Marietta City Council a presentation on RITA’s services during a joint Marietta City Council Finance and Employee Relations Committees meeting Monday night. City council is considering using RITA instead of the city tax department for municipal income tax collection to save money in light of a performance audit that says the city’s general fund may be empty as early as 2025.

Marietta City Council took another step in its discussion of whether to switch its city income tax collection to an outside agency and possibly close the city tax department.

Council held a joint Finance and Employee Relations Committee meeting Monday night to give a representative from the Regional Income Tax Agency (RITA) a chance to give information about what services the agency provides municipalities.

Marietta City Treasurer Cathy Harper and Deputy Tax Administrator Bonnie Duff were in the audience at the meeting. They were not given a chance to speak during the meeting. Duff said on Thursday that RITA told council it can provide tax services for $40,000 less than it cost the city tax department to perform services last year.

On Friday, At-Large Councilman Harley Noland confirmed that if council does choose RITA to collect city income taxes, then it would replace most of the tax department staff.

During the Monday night meeting, RITA representative Al Dolezal gave a 30-minute presentation on RITA and what it does. According to RITA’s website, it was created in 1971 to administer Ohio’s income tax ordinance for any municipality and it currently serves 400 cities and villages by providing municipal tax collection and enforcement services. RITA counts approximately 50% of Ohio’s municipalities as its clients.

Dolezal started by saying that many municipalities have concerns about their budgets and increasing revenue in support of the services they provide. RITA started with 38 municipalities and now has grown to over 400 municipalities.

“Some of the strengths that we have are mechanized operation, a dynamic tax return system,” Dolezal said. “I’m really here to show how we feel we can benefit the city of Marietta for increasing revenues.”

Dolezal said that RITA performs taxpayer registration, individual and business customer service and compliance, payment and filing collections and records management services that is all included in what the municipality pays RITA. Some of the reasons Dolezal gave for why Marietta should pick RITA is it will reduce costs, increase service levels due to things like electronic filing and it will increase the city’s tax revenue collections.

Dolezal mentioned that legal services are an optional service that RITA offers and that the cost to a municipality is the cost of sending a lawyer and paralegal to a court hearing, filing paperwork, etc.

He said the legal services are not a “hidden cost.” There have been mentions by Harper that there are “hidden costs” associated with using RITA.

Dolezal said that many municipalities that use RITA find “their tax departments are still somewhat intact.”

Later in the meeting, Noland asked Dolezal about his comment about municipalities using RITA having most of their tax departments intact.

“So you state that maybe we won’t be losing any of our staff?”, Noland asked.

“That’s up to the municipality to determine if costs, expenses, if it’s an issue,” Dolezal said. “To us we’re in partnership with the tax department…We’re kind of sharing the load, if you will, on what the municipality wants to retain.”

Dolezal provided information to council that had an estimate for how much its services would cost the city. He said the estimated projection was based on information provided by the City of Marietta and comparable RITA member information.

He said the City of Marietta’s 2023 tax collections totaled $14,386,825 and its tax rate is 1.85% and the estimated annual cost for RITA services is from $212,637 to $235,020.

At-Large Councilman Ben Rutherford asked Dolezal how frequently the cost for RITA services for a municipality is actually within the estimated amount.

Dolezal said that when RITA looked at the actual information for a couple of years that “we’re in the plus or minus 10% range.”

At-Large Councilwoman Cassidi Shoaf asked Dolezal if he had any data about how municipalities’ revenue changed after they started using RITA.

Dolexal said RITA looked at 13 municipalities that are comparable to Marietta in size, population and revenue. Going back six years they saw tax revenue increases in total an average of about 35%.

When they looked at these for 2017 to 2023 the total increase in tax revenue he said he believed the average to be 40.2%.

At the end of the meeting, Ward One Councilman Michael Scales said there will be another meeting about RITA in about two weeks. Marietta residents can go to the city’s website and find the meeting, once it is scheduled, on the city calendar.

Then council voted to go into executive session. Scales said it was for them to discuss with their attorney legal action for an imminent lawsuit.

Scales said there would be no action taken after the executive session.

Michelle Dillon can be reached at mdillon@newsandsentinel.com