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A Wichita Falls man made news last week when he was arrested while trying to pay his property taxes.
Only there's a little bit more to the story than that. The 27-year old Texan, Timothy Andrew Norris, arrived in person at the Wichita County Courthouse to pay his $600 property tax with individual dollar bills - only there was a twist. Or, er, a fold. Norris had allegedly folded each bill so tightly that it "required tax office personnel approximately six minutes to unfold each bill."
If you're doing the math, that means that it would take 3,600 minutes - or 60 hours, longer than a work week - to unfold the bills.
Tax Assessor Collector Tommy Smyth said that the spectacle brought work in the office to a halt so he asked Norris to leave. Norris refused and was eventually arrested and charged with criminal trespass.
This guy had his knickers in a twist over a $714 school tax bill? He has no idea how cheap he's got it. Can you imagine if he had to pay a $17K tax bill, typical for LI?
this guy had his knickers in a twist over a $714 school tax bill? He has no idea how cheap he's got it. Can you imagine if he had to pay a $17k tax bill, typical for li?
Well, I attended a county and local legislature meeting on this garbage. Here are the takeaways for those that are too busy.
1. As stated earlier the change in the level of assessment is a way for them to get around the 6% assessment increase limit law designed to help people from getting blindsided with huge increases and losing their home. Now 97% of Nassau loses that protection from the get go. In the name of "fairness" of course. She was worried that the protection law would slow down all this "fairness". Now you can suddenly be hit with extra thousands of tax liability all at once. It also bumps up the dollar amounts they are allowed to increase taxes via assessment changes on properties year after year going forward. (Even if they get the 5 year transitional rule in, that would still mean a 20% increase per year plus normal yearly budget increases)
2. People who pay taxes via their mortgage are going to be in for a rude awakening when the banks recalculate their payments to reflex the tax changes in their escrow accounts.
3. In order to stop the amount of grievances, the county exec must still allow grievance reviews (by law) but will not allow bulk agreements and will make it extremely difficult to make any changes to your new valuation (She is very,very proud of the numbers they cooked up.) This is also a way to curb the county having to pay back any refunds in the most egregious cases, since all grievances will be slowed down and may not happen in the same tax year (that money becomes county debt). Bottom line, don't count on any relief from a grievance even if you can show recent sales are lower than the new county numbers.
4. The tax impact in your statement is will be far lower than your actual impact as it does not include increases to the county and school budgets. When they say they are not taking a dime more on taxes it is disingenuous at best. If your numbers shows a reduction, don't bank on it.
People were pissed, huge numbers showed up, understandably as all this is still up in the air and there is no leadership to be found. The empress is giving out orders with little thought of the impacts and claiming it's all just too complicated for us little people and we just don't understand. Good luck to all.
Thanks & respect for posting your 'takeaways' for those who didn't or couldn't attend, appreciate! I had attended an earlier 'townhall-styled' meeting & 'took away' similar musings. One thing I'd like to ask you is about the underlined above ^.
The speakers from the earlier meeting I attended used the same % (97%) to represent those who will lose the protection of the NYS law (no more than 6% increase per year, & no more than 20% increase over 4 or 5 year timeframe).
My question is this; who are the 3% of homeowners who will retain that protection?
Is it those similar to underlined below?
Quote:
Originally Posted by dagny77
They should call this the mcmansion property tax reduction act. I just looked and the new huge homes (less than 3 years old) they built at the end of my street saw their taxes goes down by thousands while the rest of us at best saw our taxes go up slightly or by thousands. How exactly is that fair?! These homes make the rest of the 40+ year old houses on the block look like doll houses. People bought these homes knowing their carrying costs, meanwhile the rest of us who have been here for decades in some instances are quickly getting priced out of ours... all this in the name of evening things out?! It almost seems to me they are looking to make new construction cheaper so they can push over-development and the rest of us can pay for it. I remember when Curran was going door to door and one of her big points was how we needed high density construction...I guess this helps that agenda.
To add insult to injury, when I looked at the comparison sales they give on my property it listed a home a block away that is my exact model house which sold at the end of August for almost 100k less than my new assessment! This house BTW, while structurally the same is on a double lot with a pool! Beyond that, even that particular house has the same new assessment, again almost a 100k above what it literally just sold for.
This system is more corrupt than before as it as all done under the pretense of fairness. If you felt you were over assessed and could back up your claim you had a very simple process to correct the problem. If you felt you were fine, than there was nothing to do. Over time that alone should even things out. Now, tens of thousands of people are going to wake up blindsided with thousands of dollars in new costs (in addition to the increases in insurance, water, heating, etc costs they've been dealing with for years).
I am also disgusted that she can blow past the yearly tax increase cap law that was meant to protect residents, by just waving her wand and instantly making all assessed values significantly higher. Now, the real dollar increases they can take over time from your pocket is also significantly higher regardless of if your particular home went up, down or sideways or if it is phased in or not. This is something people don't seem to grasp. Do we have recall elections in Nassau?!!
Sorry this is not our fault (those who grieved). We didn’t invent this system it’s only fair that this is phased in over time.
You sound like my kids. "Not our fault" and that's the end of it. Still baffling that you can claim "fair" when taking money from your fellow homeowners, people who may very well have attempted to grieve and been part of the 20% who didn't have the same luck. People who you are asking to lose more for your own benefit even though the ship has been righted. If it's money from other means rather than screwing your neighbor, it'd be a different story. While you may be saving another $3k X 5 years, someone else is permanently losing that ~$15k, in real dollars, for your selfishness. Since you're the one speaking out, I'll go so far as to say you'd have no problem affording another $3k per year. Phasing it in is nothing but a reason for you and the majority of others to save your own hide and take from others. This is the definition of fair these days?
But are the numbers more accurate? That is to be determined. My new assessed value is over 80k more than any similar sale in my town in the past 3 months when inventory was low. Now with raising interest rates and anticipation of the Feds raising rates again, prices should drop even further.
Reassessment put everyone back onto an even playing field. No more $600k homes down at $250k which was quite damaging for calculating fair share. Your $80k overassessment is relative to other people's overassessments also, so you can't look at just your increase and believe that's going to be your relative increase. If everyone else is overassessed by that much or close, it is all even just the same. Fed rates will affect everyone equally, just the same. You also have to remember these numbers are projections for 2 years out.
A computer spit these numbers out so they're not all going to be 100% accurate. They will still allow you to grieve but, thankfully, will be a much more stringent process. Rather than a game even regular citizens were benefiting from. Time for everyone to pay the piper and address the real issue.
Reassessment put everyone back onto an even playing field. No more $600k homes down at $250k which was quite damaging for calculating fair share. Your $80k overassessment is relative to other people's overassessments also, so you can't look at just your increase and believe that's going to be your relative increase. If everyone else is overassessed by that much or close, it is all even just the same. Fed rates will affect everyone equally, just the same. You also have to remember these numbers are projections for 2 years out.
A computer spit these numbers out so they're not all going to be 100% accurate. They will still allow you to grieve but, thankfully, will be a much more stringent process. Rather than a game even regular citizens were benefiting from. Time for everyone to pay the piper and address the real issue.
Problem with going with their supposed market value is, at least with the houses they compared me to, is bedrooms, bathrooms and garages don't match to my house. It is not a fair comparison in the real world.
Let's see if the real issue does get addressed: extraordinary taxes for sub par performance. Will we see concurrent reductions in county payroll? Decreased expense as county workers pay a bigger part of their health care costs? I am not optimistic. On LI only 1 part of a ledger is looked at by local govts: income via taxes. It never looks at cutting the expenses side.
Problem with going with their supposed market value is, at least with the houses they compared me to, is bedrooms, bathrooms and garages don't match to my house. It is not a fair comparison in the real world.
Let's see if the real issue does get addressed: extraordinary taxes for sub par performance. Will we see concurrent reductions in county payroll? Decreased expense as county workers pay a bigger part of their health care costs? I am not optimistic. On LI only 1 part of a ledger is looked at by local govts: income via taxes. It never looks at cutting the expenses side.
Yeah, the county plays a part but mostly it's the schools. 60% or more of your tax dollars are plowed into the school district. When you get those paper bulletins from the school district around budget vote time, they never mention money or anything to do with economizing. Always smiling students, achievement awards, helping the community, etc.
LI schools are a money pit, and consideration for the taxpayers is never an issue. I live in a midsize city now with ONE school district, not 127. My taxes are 80% lower. Have fun with that.
Reassessment put everyone back onto an even playing field. No more $600k homes down at $250k which was quite damaging for calculating fair share. Your $80k overassessment is relative to other people's overassessments also, so you can't look at just your increase and believe that's going to be your relative increase. If everyone else is overassessed by that much or close, it is all even just the same. Fed rates will affect everyone equally, just the same. You also have to remember these numbers are projections for 2 years out.
A computer spit these numbers out so they're not all going to be 100% accurate. They will still allow you to grieve but, thankfully, will be a much more stringent process. Rather than a game even regular citizens were benefiting from. Time for everyone to pay the piper and address the real issue.
Yep, a great new even playing field where the million dollar mini mansions they just put up at the end of my street get reduced 800k new assessments and the 400k 40 year old homes the rest of us live in get 600-700k assessments. Hmm, love that even playing field. Of course we all bought in decades ago eagerly waiting to finally get our fair 700k tax on at best 450-500k homes and the people who just bought million dollar homes expected a tax break -- yep--- very fair, right. Pfff, fair for new developers pushing new homes maybe. Heck, even among our old rows of cloned homes, the values seem to swing wildly. What is the reasoning, who knows - but they sure are proud of their computer algorithm. So proud they will make changes to valuations through ARC incredibly difficult now, even if your numbers are high.
Respectfully, the problem I have with your thinking on this issue is, as things stood, if you didn't have a problem with your comparative tax valuation, you left it alone. If you did and had cause, you can log on to a simple county website for free, check your recent sales with a couple of clicks, see if you were in line with your neighbors or not and grieve. Literally all in 10 minutes and for FREE. You didn't get money out of the sky (your money by the way - i hate the thinking that is so pervasive that not taking more money people work hard to earn costs the government somehow, like we are surfs to this system - perhaps we really are if you step back). You would be awarded a decrease *if you had proof* you were unfairly assessed based on comparable homes. They even did the work for you and provided you recent sales around your home. Seems incredibly fair to me! We were also protected from getting walloped with thousands in new taxes - who can absorb that?!You can decide to not take vacations, or try to milk another year out of that 10 year old car, etc, but in one shot the county exec can cost you your family home with the power of law enforcement and out of the clear blue. The role of government should not be to suddenly force people from their homes.
So, we now have a new county exec, knowingly and *purposefully* skirting state home owner protection laws, claiming fairness as the mantra - most likely carefully thinking out who her constituencies are. She is also saying they would like to change the system to do yearly or close to yearly county reassessments - again for fairness. If you skirted the first round, do you really think when the county increasingly needs money (as our debt and employee liabilities are skyrocketing) and the new rules allowing for it are in place that they wont take a bigger bite year after year from *everyone*? kicking that difficult budget can down the road some more. Let's get real. Unless you just moved here, we all know the answer to that - based not on theory but what we've lived through. But, maybe that's the point of all of this in the end.
Yeah, the county plays a part but mostly it's the schools. 60% or more of your tax dollars are plowed into the school district. When you get those paper bulletins from the school district around budget vote time, they never mention money or anything to do with economizing. Always smiling students, achievement awards, helping the community, etc.
LI schools are a money pit, and consideration for the taxpayers is never an issue. I live in a midsize city now with ONE school district, not 127. My taxes are 80% lower. Have fun with that.
Consolidating school districts has been considered in the not so distant past however the 'nays' always exceeded the 'yeas' & the ideas were shelved.
You're right about NC school taxes representing 60% or more of NC homeowners' property taxes.
On LI (& likely nearly everywhere else in the US), there's a direct relationship between good schools & property values. With so many school districts, & along with the correlation to property values, the long term result is property in districts with good schools continue to increase more in value. Thus, more tax monies to improve the already good schools. & so on.
The good school districts get better & better & the property increases in value.
The poor school districts get worse & the property value does not increase as much.
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