No tax increase in 2016 budget
Washington County officials are anticipating no tax increase in the 2016 budget, and they’re saying to keep the 2017 budget “revenue-neutral,” millage will have to decrease substantially because property assessments are almost guaranteed to go up.
The 2016 county budget will be the last one based on property values established Jan. 1, 1981, under the county’s previous assessment.
According to a timeline established by Tyler Technologies, which has a $6.96 million contract with the county to conduct the property reassessment, homeowners and landowners will be receiving their current and new assessments this coming February.
A period of what Tyler is calling “informal reviews” should begin that month in the Chapman Building, West Beau Street and Jefferson Avenue, where the county has rented space so residents can correct in the records misinformation about a particular property.
Wesley Graham, Tyler’s project supervisor for the Washington County reassessment, said in an Observer-Reporter story last June about the completion of data collection, “The county is going to tax at 100 percent of market value as of July 1, 2015, and they’ve been taxing at 25 percent of the base year value of Jan. 1, 1981. The market values have gone up in 34 years in most places.”
Property values can change over time, but for the purposes of reassessment and comparison, property values across the county will be set as of July 1, 2015, even though those values don’t affect what one pays out of pocket – or bank account escrow – for county and municipal taxes until Jan. 1, 2017.
School districts, because of their fiscal year, won’t be using the new values for tax billing purposes until July 1, 2017.
The “sticker shock” can be alarming when people see property values increase and not understand that municipal and county property tax millage will also be decreasing.
But, for 2016, plans call for Washington County’s tax levy to remain at 24.9 mills because it’s the last year under those 1981 valuations.
To aid in the preparation of a preliminary 2016 budget, the finance department has scheduled a series of public hearings Monday through Thursday in the seventh-floor conference room of the Courthouse Square office building, where more than two dozen elected officials and department heads will justify row office and departmental budgets, often presenting a “wish list” that they hope will result in the funding of various projects.
The hearings are planned for 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday; 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday; 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday and 9:30 to 11 a.m. Thursday.
One category that is expected to cost more in 2016 is conducting elections because so many more people register to vote and then cast ballots in a presidential election year. The election office’s budget, $473,000 this year, could increase to $601,900 next year due to more absentee balloting and the hiring of contract employees to handle the bigger workload. The elections office also hopes to reconfigure precincts in areas where population has markedly shrunk or grown.
Finance Director Roger Metcalfe said he expects to present a preliminary budget on Friday, Nov. 6. State law requires the county to produce what’s known as a “posted budget” 20 days before the commissioners adopt it. Metcalfe expects to exceed that 20-day limit, by collating a posted budget by Nov. 20, in advance of the final scheduled board of commissioners meeting of the year on Thursday, Dec. 17.
The McGuffey and Washington school districts filed suit against the county in 2008 for not reassessing property for nearly 30 years. Out of legal options, members of the current board of Washington County commissioners were faced with a contempt-of-court hearing in June 2013, when they opened bids from firms vying to conduct the reassessment. Two months later, they unanimously chose the Moraine, Ohio-based Tyler to conduct the reassessment.