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Yesterday I got a visit from the State 'Property Appraiser / Property Tax Division'.
This gentleman showed me his tax map [which I already had a copy of].
He explained that his office had not been to my township since 1999, and that according to their schedule not to expect them to return until 2020.
He verified the outside dimensions of our house, the type of foundation, and type of siding.
He assured me that our valuation will be dropping; though he has not sure if the Mil Rate would be changing up or down.
He seemed very friendly and professional.
Apparently his office is on schedule to review every residence in every Unorganized-Township every 10-years.
There is one person of whom I have previously corresponded with in his office. Her's is the only name that I knew from that office. So I mentioned her. Now since I had been in correspondence with her, I had assumed that she was some big mucky-muck in that office. As it turns out she is their secretary. Ooops! Boy had I made the wrong assumption
Good for you! I wish they would re-assess our town again! They were all over raising taxes during the height of the real estate bubble. Since prices have dropped to nearly half of their previous value they have not been around to re-assess....I wonder why??? ...Robbers!!
That's okay....they will find a way to raise them, even if they have to do it sneaky. I just got my Florida tax proposal yesterday. Our house lost 28K in assessed value. Then I took a look at the millage rates. Every LAST one of them had been increased by 9-11%. While most likely I won't have to mail a check for a larger amount of cash, it still is a tax increase. Technically my taxes should have gone down by the assessed value.....and they should have held the millage rate the same. That would reflect a government that is in touch with it's constituents.
In Florida they are going to have to advertise this as a tax increase, even though the dollar amount will not be more. That should be really interesting when the public meetings start. I fired off a letter to the commissioners, and one already answered. He didn't know they raised the millage rates. Wow is he informed......
While the values of property are dropping, all the other expenses keep rising. Someone has to pay for city services, like schools and police and fire, that everyone finds essential.
Everybody wants someone else to pay for it. They will scream when their taxes go up; but they will also be happy when budget cuts cut staff for fire/rescue, police, schools, until their house burns down because there weren't enough firemen, or their house is robbed and no cops came for 2 hours, or the performance of kids in school drops because class sizes rise above 40.
If you don't want any city services, then you should be able to be put on a list that didn't pay for those things and then when you have a fire or you need emergency health services nobody will come, or when you get robbed no cops will come, or your children don't get free education and you have to pay the $4500 per student that it costs to education a child in today's society. This only makes sense.
Towns used to do just fine when services were much less than they are now. Our town has a zillion dollar boom ladder truck and there isn't a building over three stories in the entire town!! The majority of houses and barns I have seen on fire around here are nothing but a foundation by the time the fire is out. I have only seen the FD save one small house but the FD themselves did a ton of damage to it trying to put out the fire. The house still had to be gutted, the roof replaced completely and all of the windows and doors replaced. It couldn't have cost much more to start from scratch! The police have SWAT weapons and riot gear....why??? There has never been a need for it and most likely never will yet the taxpayers bought it. The school throws away all of it's soccer and footballs every year. I have a friend who gets notified by the dump when they arrive and he redistributes them to schools that don't budget for new ones. The "dump" renamed itself a recycling center (even though 80% of the stuff brought in ends up in the MERC furnaces!) Our taxes keep it open yet we get charged $25.00 to toss out an old air conditioner. $15.00 for an old TV, $2.00 a piece for flourescent light bulbs and they won't even take old paint! Now they don't even plow the roads as much citing high diesel fuel costs and attempting to conserve sand and salt!(so they tell us) Wonderful services! Well worth the $5000 a year we pay in taxes!
While the values of property are dropping, all the other expenses keep rising. Someone has to pay for city services, like schools and police and fire, that everyone finds essential.
Everybody wants someone else to pay for it. They will scream when their taxes go up; but they will also be happy when budget cuts cut staff for fire/rescue, police, schools, until their house burns down because there weren't enough firemen, or their house is robbed and no cops came for 2 hours, or the performance of kids in school drops because class sizes rise above 40.
If you don't want any city services, then you should be able to be put on a list that didn't pay for those things and then when you have a fire or you need emergency health services nobody will come, or when you get robbed no cops will come, or your children don't get free education and you have to pay the $4500 per student that it costs to education a child in today's society. This only makes sense.
Taxes should be voluntary.
Zarathu
I don't have a problem paying taxes. Really, I don't. The problem I have is when I'm am told that it's "in the best interest of <fill in the blank>" and "this is how we're going to save money and jobs" and once I read (and decipher) the incredibly inane tiny "fine print" I see that I am in fact screwed and my tax bill has in fact gone UP.
Frankly, I'd rather they just tell me point blank: "Look, we're broke. You want this stuff? You're going to have to pay for it." THEN I can decide.
Last edited by cebdark; 08-27-2010 at 10:45 AM..
Reason: added
I don't have a problem paying taxes. Really, I don't. The problem I have is when I'm am told that it's "in the best interest of <fill in the blank>" and "this is how we're going to save money and jobs" and once I read (and decipher) the incredibly inane tiny "fine print" I see that I am in fact screwed and my tax bill has in fact gone UP.
Frankly, I'd rather they just tell me point blank: "Look, we're broke. You want this stuff? You're going to have to pay for it." THEN I can decide.
You make my point. You should get to choose which services you want to pay for. Then when you need those services and you didn't get them, you can only blame yourself for not paying for them. It is what it is.
People are always saying that its too much unless they needed the services.
I can just see it now. Someone has a heart attack, but they were unwilling to pay for fire/rescue services because all those defibrillators and all that training for only using it to save 5 people the whole year was just not cost effective. So the person calls in, and the dispatcher looks at their name and address on the computer input and says: "I'm sorry, sir, but you opted for the less expensive fire/rescue and emergency vehicle service is not available to you. Now if you could bring your victim to the fire station, we'd be happy to transport them." Or, "I'm sorry, sir, we have an ambulance transportation, but no EMT can be assigned to you since you didn't pay for that." Or, "I'm sorry sir, you opted for minimum intrusion into your property so that the firemen wouldn't damage anything. So we just couldn't get into the house at the right place because the fire wasn't near any doors, and in that other instance, we weren't allowed to damage any of your shrubbery, so we couldn't get near the fire. I'm sorry your house burned to the ground, but you opted for minimal intrusion, and the fire just took advantage of us, and we couldn't fight back."
Most ladder trucks are not used to go up to 5 stories to get people out. They are used to get the fire hoses over the house and right into the fire. "Oh.... your house burned to the ground. Yeah.... we could have dumped water right into the center of the fire, but because you didn't pay for the ladder truck, we could only dump water on the outside of the house and the interior burned from the inside out, oddly enough."
Or.... When your child enters to go to school. "Oh, I'm sorry you excluded payment of your school taxes because it was too expensive for you. Your child has no place here. Please find another way to have your child educated, since we have no payment from you."
You should have the right to pay for what you want, and not a penny more.
Or better yet. We could have services provided in three levels: the good old days(1940-1950 style of service), the bad old days: (1960-1980 equipment and service), or up-to-date state of the art. Three different levels of payment. It would really work for schools. If most people opted for the good old days, there would be no need to renovate any buildings, there would be no special services at all(counselor, special education, etc), no school lunches provided, yeah. that would really drop the costs.
Towns used to do just fine when services were much less than they are now. Our town has a zillion dollar boom ladder truck and there isn't a building over three stories in the entire town!! The majority of houses and barns I have seen on fire around here are nothing but a foundation by the time the fire is out. I have only seen the FD save one small house but the FD themselves did a ton of damage to it trying to put out the fire. The house still had to be gutted, the roof replaced completely and all of the windows and doors replaced. It couldn't have cost much more to start from scratch! The police have SWAT weapons and riot gear....why??? There has never been a need for it and most likely never will yet the taxpayers bought it. The school throws away all of it's soccer and footballs every year. I have a friend who gets notified by the dump when they arrive and he redistributes them to schools that don't budget for new ones. The "dump" renamed itself a recycling center (even though 80% of the stuff brought in ends up in the MERC furnaces!) Our taxes keep it open yet we get charged $25.00 to toss out an old air conditioner. $15.00 for an old TV, $2.00 a piece for flourescent light bulbs and they won't even take old paint! Now they don't even plow the roads as much citing high diesel fuel costs and attempting to conserve sand and salt!(so they tell us) Wonderful services! Well worth the $5000 a year we pay in taxes!
You make a good point. I think most people would agree that Fire Dept's should be abolished since they rarely save the house and do a ton of damage to the burning house cutting holes in walls and stuff like that to try to reach the fire. Additionally, most fire departments are volunteers, so they should either get expensive professional training that the towns won't pay for, or do something else with their free time.
And I know for a fact that school taxes would be much cheaper if they actually reused their playground balls each year rather than buying new ones. Better yet, let's get rid of any new fangled education stuff and teach in the way and with the same equipment they had in the 1950's, even though that was 55 years ago.
And, everyone knows that this is a scam about the road plowing. Diesel doesn't really cost $4.50 a gallon and the big truck with the plows on them really get 30 mpg, not 6 mpg, and why should the plow guys get more that minimum wage of $7.50 an hour. After all, how hard can it be to run one of those big trucks for 18 straight hours during a snow storm. And besides, buying those big dump trucks is really a rip off, cause people can buy them used for about $6000.
Heck, these municipalities are just screwing the population with what they say they need.
Its always worthwhile to go to the twp meetings and get a detailed budget list, to find out what things really cost, and what government regulations they are forced to pay for just to stay there. Failure to look at actual costs of things and of the regulations, etc., gives you an opportunity to complain. However, our representative government DOES allow you to look at the costs of things.
I grew up in an area known for annual brush-fires. My parents had a cabin in the foot hills up at about 4,500ft, in a town that has always had problems with brush-fires [since the redwoods were cut-down leaving only creosote brush growing in it's absence]. I advocated that they put in-ground sprinklers around the perimeter on their cabin and a set of sprinklers on the roof. As it would help to prevent brushfires from threatening their cabin. But as it turned out sprinklers are illegal there.
We have an apartment building that in 1991 failed a fire inspection because the Fire Marshall wanted a fire-rated room built around the furnaces in the basement. This furnace-room had to have sprinklers in it, a special air intake that would automatically close if it got hot, and a powered exhaust fan that would likewise shut-off if the furnace-room got hot. So we had the room built and inspected.
But then in 2007 it failed the fire inspection again; this time I had to rip out the fire-room. The Fire Marshall no longer wants furnaces to be in their own fire-rated room.
There are times when I think that Fire Marshalls do not have a clue of what they are doing. their cluelessness costs property owners lots of money.
Like I said though, I am in favor of sprinkler systems. I suspect that if more properties had sprinklers we would see far less fire damage.
You might be able to save on the wear and tear of firetrucks a bit; and save a lot of buildings if every building had sprinklers. But that would shift some of the responsibility for properties onto the property owners and away from society.
Good for you! I wish they would re-assess our town again! They were all over raising taxes during the height of the real estate bubble. Since prices have dropped to nearly half of their previous value they have not been around to re-assess....I wonder why??? ...Robbers!!
Hi Maineah... I know you understand this which is why I have to ask why?
If mil rates are set according to the towns overall budget when compared to the towns overall appraisal then why would it matter if valuations fluctuate in-between citywide appraisals. So what if everyone’s property value went down 20%.. it doesn’t mean your tax payment will change. Aren’t individual appraisals only relative in determining what piece of the total tax pie you’re responsible for?
I only ask because I hear that sentiment ALL the time and I assume most people just don’t get it.. But I know from experience you do and were curious how a lower valuation would help you
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