Despite lower valuations, mill levies still on the rise
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Rising fuel and medical costs for municipalities as well as flatter property tax valuations mean mill levies are on their ways up.
Preliminary budgets for USD 290, the City of Ottawa and Franklin County indicate mill levies will rise by up to about three mills each. This year may not be the worst though. As property values continue to fall next year’s property valuations and subsequently mill levies could be even worse in the future.
How did all this happen? Two primary factors are driving this year’s need for higher dependence on property taxes: a reduction in property taxes for businesses’ new machinery and equipment personal property tax and lower property values for residential properties.
The Kansas Legislature phased out the statewide property tax exemption for new business equipment purchased after July 1, 2006, to prompt job growth. That shift in tax burden — estimated to be about $1.8 billion represented nearly 7 percent of the total property tax base — happened at the same time many residential property owners around the state were receiving lower property valuations. Without a multi-year mitigation plan by the state, which extended payments to local governments, the impact would be even worse.
At first blush some property owners may have been pleased with a lower property valuation with the dream of lower taxes. The reality, however, is the mill levy is rising to keep up local taxing units rate of inflation as well as offsetting an estimated $2- to $2.5-million loss in the tax base because of the machinery-and-equipment tax roll-back.
The public gets its say on the budget at coming budget public hearings.
Final budgets are due by August 21. Meanwhile, each taxing unit will have public hearings before the budgets are finished. Initial public hearings include:
• Ottawa Recreation Commission, 6 p.m. July 28;
• City of Ottawa, 6:30 p.m. Aug. 6;
• USD 290, 6:45 p.m. Aug. 11;
• Franklin County’s is to be determined.
Taxes are a trade-off. If one taxing group doesn’t pay then another one has to. Those lower property valuations, which may have led some to believe they would have lower property taxes are finding out just how wrong that conclusion was.
— Jeanny Sharp, editor and publisher
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