The Gnashing of Teeth — By Tommy Purser

There seems to be an elevated amount of gnashing of the teeth around these parts lately about the new, elevated property tax assessments and, thus, the higher taxes property owners will face in the near future. I, too, am dismayed about the matter but not to the point of having to pay higher dental costs. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard similar sounds of grounding molars, and it won’t be the last. I don’t gnash my teeth along with others so inclined but I shake my head at the alarming number of people who have no idea how or why assessments go up and/or how or why tax bills go up. Both go up for sometimes similar reasons and sometimes different reasons. But there’s one constant — they almost always go up.
I do remember a time that school taxes went down. And they went down hugely. At the time, the board had built up a hefty surplus and they voted to set a millage rate of zero. At the time I suspected there was an ulterior motive in play and in retrospect I am all but sure there was an ulterior motive but that’s another story.
Let me proffer a generalization — a reasonably accurate explanation — a pulled from a foggy recollection of things learned long ago: If you consider your home to be worth, say, $100,000, and a home of similar size and age next door to you sells for, say, $200,000, and a home of similar size and age around the corner sells for, say, $210,000, and a home of similar size and age half a block away sells for $205,000 …. you get my drift …. according to the “ways” property assessments go, your house is, in fact, no longer worth $100,000. It’s worth much more. In fact, it’s worth about twice as much. That’s not the tax assessor’s fault. It’s just a fact. And if your home’s assessment goes up because of the prices consumers are willing to pay for similar size and age homes, that means the values of all the other homes of similar size and age in your neighborhood will also go up.
Now, that’s only one part of the story. The values of all property in the county are added up each year to determine the county’s tax digest, i.e., the total market value of all property in the county. Not only the homes, but the businesses, the industries, the business inventories, the farmlands, the farm equipment, the pine trees, the livestock, the fish ponds, the cars, the trucks, the motorcycles, and on and on it goes. Once that total sum – the digest – is determined, the elected officials calculate the rate at which they must draw from that digest to accumulate the money necessary to balance their budgets. The more they plan to spend in the coming year, the more money they must collect to balance their budgets. That rate is the annual millage rate our elected officials use to determine everyone’s tax obligation each year.
Keep in mind that all I’ve written here is an elementary, off-the-cuff explanation. The matter is much, much more complicated. For instance, the school system is required by the State to levy a predetermined minimum millage rate. And there are myriad other factors that come into play. The only way to keep up is to attend the meetings – all the meetings – of our elected governments. Or maybe you should run for office. Then you’ll know for sure. But you probably still won’t be able to explain it.