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Deval Patrick boasts property taxes went up last year
By adamg on Wed, 09/01/2010 - 9:11am
John Carroll parses a Patrick press release that's mainly about how Charles (not Charlie) Baker is a Republican, but which proudly states that "For the first time in twenty years and amid a global economic recession, property tax increases under the Patrick-Murray administration went down three years in a row – from 4.2% in the first year of the term to 3.3% presently, representing a 22% decrease."
Or as Carroll explains:
A 22% decrease in increases, for those of you keeping score at home.
That’s a helluva slogan: We’re taking less of more.
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Comments
Governors have nothing to do with property taxes.
Although if the state raises taxes and has extra money, they can give that money to towns who can then cut property taxes. If towns get less money from the state, they will often raise taxes. Town residents can also vote to increase their own taxes in order to build special projects.
Yes, but ...
It's an issue this year because four years ago Patrick promised he'd reduce property taxes. Of course, then came the Great Recession, and one could give him a pass for that, but the Republicans in the race (you know, Baker and Cahil) aren't, so I guess he feels compelled to tell us how he's doing a good job because the taxes are going up, only not as much.
Property Taxes
Thank you.
And by the way, if there wasn't so much nimbyism about commercial development, many cities and towns (and towns in particular) would not be in this bind. You can't say that you want an overwhelmingly residential town to raise kids in and then complain that the taxes are out of sight because all of the schools for those kids cost a lot to operate. Municipal management (who and how) makes a huge difference.
Also, and as I have said before, I cannot believe how LOW my property taxes are. If you want to know what high property taxes look like, call someone in Long Island (NY) or New Jersey. I know someone who was paying $25k/yr in taxes on a house in Long Island assessed at $950k (two years ago). At that same time, someone I know in Brookline was paying about $11-12K on a house assessed at $1.1M. The schools in the two communities were comparable (but Brookline's were probably a little better), but Brookline beat the pants off that community in all other categories of public services.
Then what the hell is Boston doing?
Boston is off all of the gov's charts
Residential taxes - 2006-2010 up 4.3% compounded annually
Commercial taxes - 2006-2010 up 5.34% compounded annually
Total property taxes - 2006-2010 up 4.94% compounded annually
Next year's budget includes a total increase in property taxes of 4.37% - if most of this falls on residents due to the decline in commercial valuations and fairly stable residential valuations, we are looking at high single digit increases at best - possibly a return to double digits again. For example, if commercial receipts even remain flat - it represents an average 11.55% increase to residential property owners - and depending how the numbers fall out commercial taxes could actually go down magnifying the increase on homeowners.
Stevil:
Your residential property tax should have went down in 2009 and back up this year. I believe the rate went from 11% in 2008 down to almost 10% in 2009 and back up to 11% this year.
Plus my properties in Boston lost value so I paid less taxes on them.
Although ...
The rates are a bit meaningless without also knowing the assessed value of your property, since those can fluctuate as well.
Just sign me,
Somebody who was one of the few people, apparently, whose property-tax bill went down a couple years ago because our assessed value fell more than everybody else's.
Mine did too Adam.
It had been going up for the past 10 years until 3 years ago.
That's how Prop 2.5 works
That's exactly it. Pretty much every municipality spends to the levy limit so overall changes in valuation don't affect the tax you pay. If everyone's property drops 30% everyone's tax will stay the same (modulo the annual increase in the levy limit). The tax you pay will only be different if the percentage change in the valuation of your property is different than the percentage change in the aggregate valuation of your class of property across the entire municipality.
So if your valuation drops 20% while the total valuation of all residential property in your municipality drops 10%, your taxes will likely go down. Or if you only drop 5%, your taxes will go up and by more than average.
Thank you
That was helpful.
Mine have been fairly steady
Not too much change in mine personally - I did this on citywide numbers - total residential taxes in 2006 were $469 million. In 2010 residents paid $555 million. A small portion of this is new construction - the city adds a few hundred units of housing annually. About half is the annual 2.5% increase. The remainder is the shift from commercial liability to residential - which goes up and down from year to year - but over the long term (last 10 years) has shown a steady shift from the commercial side when commercial paid 70% of the liability to the residential side where residents now pay about 38% of the property tax liability. To the extent I can play Karnak, that shows no sign of abating until the mix is about 45% residential/55% commercial. This tends to be somewhat self-correcting (higher taxes ultimately will reduce home values) - but knowing your house is worth thousands less is little comfort in saving a few hundred dollars a year in taxes!
Of course it went down in 2009 - that was leading into an election year! :-)