Dec 20, 2016 2 min read

Washington County property owners will be seeing 2017 tax bills with a 2.43 millage rate.

The tax levy had been 24.9 mills, and no, the millage recorded on January’s bills is not a misprint. Due to the first countywide property reassessment in 35 years, the county and municipalities will be using a different method of calculation.

Prior millages were based on 25 percent of 1981 property values, but 2017’s bill is based on 100 percent of property value as of July 1, 2015.

The 2017 spending plan adopted Thursday by the board of commissioners designates 2.27 mills for general purposes and .16 mills for debt services.

County officials have said they wanted their 2017 general fund budget of $89.8 million to be “revenue neutral,” but that refers to the tax bite countywide, not an individual taxpayer’s property.

Approximately 1,000 assessment appeals were filed with Common Pleas Court before the Dec. 12 deadline, but those cases won’t begin to be heard until after the first of the year.

Property owners won’t be receiving school district tax bills under the recent reassessment until next summer, because school fiscal years begin July 1. Counties and municipalities operate on a calendar year.

One source of revenue for the county that differs from previous years is an Alcohol Highway Safety School to be conducted in-house. The county expects to bring in $200,000 in new revenue that was previously paid to the Southwestern Pennsylvania Human Services Inc. CARE Center for the state-required classes for those who have been charged with drunken driving. Locally, the program was known as the Stout School because then-state Sen. J. Barry Stout was instrumental in an overhaul of alcohol safety legislation statewide in the 1980s.

At their meeting Thursday, the commissioners entered into personal service contracts with Erich Curnow, Paul Mitchell and Laura Dieterle to instruct students. Each instructor will be paid $500 for each 12 1/2-hour class cycle beginning in January as part of a revamping of how drunken driving cases are handled in court.

“This is nothing against the CARE Center,” said Patrick Grimm, Washington County Court administrator. “A lot of counties are just running their own programs in-house.”

Washington County Court had 976 driving-under-the-influence cases in 2015.