Did anyone hear the mayor explaining his tax increase on the news?
What an a**. He says the tax increase is because of assessments going down. Assessment is supposed to be the value of your house.
He therefore is saying that the values are going down but he REFUSES to reassess the city. When values drop the city is OBLIGATED to reassess down.
The people who have taken the initiative to grieve their assessment and win are getting a lower tax BILL. If you failed to grieave, your will see an increase.
But pay attention to what the mayor said "the assessments are down." For the sake of explanation, let's assume that assessment values are equal to the market values at this moment in time. Read and learn. There are two terms:
ASSESSMENT VALUE - the assessment value is the market value of the property.
TAXABLE ASSESSMENT VALUE - the assesment value on which taxes are calculated.
These are two different things. The mayor provided a partial answer. He said "assessments are down," when he should have said "taxable assessments are down."
That means that the TAXABLE ASSESSMENT of the downtown properties are 0, ZERO, ZILCH, NATTA, NOTHING.
If there are only two properties in the city, one is your house and the other is Proctors. Assume the tax LEVY is $10,000 - meaning the amount that the city must collect in property taxes.
Let's say the assessments of your property and Proctors are such that the tax BILLS would be as follows:
Your tax bill $1,000
Proctors tax bill + 9,000
City collects $10,000
Now, the city goes and gives a 100% tax exemption to Proctors, i.e., the TAXABLE ASSESSMENT VALUE of Proctors is 0.00. Now what?
Your tax bill ............
Proctors tax bill + $ 0
City collects $10,000
Well people, how much will your tax bill be? Enter the answer on the red dotted line.
The mayor really need to state "the TAXABLE assessment values are down." meaning all the 100% permanent tax exemptions given out to his rich party cronies. The amount that is not paid by downtown is thus forced upon the financially struggling homeowners in the! This, fellow board memebers is what DV calls "improving the city through economic development,: i.e., create low wage jobs, reduce the tax base and STEAL money from the homeowners.
Oh yeah, McC said there are distressed properties How did they get distressed in the first place? Oh yeah, how about the taxes wen so high, the neighborhoods were ignored, people fled the city by selling their homes at a fraction of what they paid for the house and improvements, or people fled the city by just abandoning their houses, or the homeowner could not pay the taxes (because they had to eat, pay NiMo, medical, etc), so the city seized their house and the city is unable to sell many such houses because VERY FEW people are willing to buy in the city.
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