On Mon, 16 Jan 2017 22:16:37 -0500, wrote:

On Mon, 16 Jan 2017 21:55:06 -0500, wrote:

On Mon, 16 Jan 2017 20:28:17 -0500, wrote:

On Mon, 16 Jan 2017 19:57:23 -0500, wrote:

On Mon, 16 Jan 2017 19:22:57 -0500, wrote:

On Mon, 16 Jan 2017 06:07:04 -0500, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On 1/15/2017 10:46 PM, wrote:



That seems to be one area that Vermont actually did better. They had
a "Grand List" of all property in the town. The tax rate was set at
the annual budger divided by the "Grand List". If property values
tank, the rate goes up. The total tax is the same (in theory). Here,
the taxes colllected vary with property taxes. Seems they should vary
by the "needs" of the community.


In theory it works that way. Unfortunately, too many people don't
understand it. When the come around every 10 years (now 5) I hear people
complain that once revalued their tax will go up. The town finance
committee seems willing to make that come true. It is a money grab with
an increased budget.

My point was that it doesn't work like that here. It's the tax rate
that's "fixed", not the budgets.
The "mil rate" is fixed - which means you pay the same per thousand
dollars of "assessed value" as the next guy.

Right. It's that way here. In Vermont the mil rate wasn't fixed and
changed with the budget. IOW, here property values drive the tax
paid, thus the budget (mil rate is fixed). In Vermont, it's the
budget that drives the mil rate, thus the taxes paid. It's a big
difference.

The mil rate changes from year to year, but is fixed for the region
for the year.

Now you have me confused. If the mil rate changes from year to year,
you're more like Vermont. That makes more sense than having budgets
controlled by real estate values (as it is here).

By "region", do you mean across many taxing entities? Cities pay the
same as towns, pay the same as unincorporated areas? Schools aren't
localy controlled? Roads, fire, and police aren't locally controlled?


Up here we have "regional government" In our region it is two level -
in some it is single level. A lot of the costs are shared throughout
the region (school, hospitals, water, sewers, transit, main roads,
etc) while other services are handled by the local second level -
township or city. All the former small towns are now part of a larger
entity. There is a regional component to our taxes, as well as a local
component. In my case, the City of Waterloo, but there is also the
township of Woolwich, the city of Cambridge, the township of
Wellesley, the Township of Wilmot, etc. The budget is set by council
after much deliberation, balancing the "wish list" against the revenue
available from the current assessment without raising the mil rate by
an unacceptable level.
We've owned this house for 25 years, and our taxes have gone from
roughly $800 to $3200 (while the value of the house has gone from
$67000 to somewhere around $380,000) The taxes have not increased as
fast as the value of the property - for sure.

The property prices are going up like a rocket right now as we are
only 100km (60 miles) from Toronto - where the average cost of a
detatched home has reached about 1.2 million. In the whole region
there were only 111 active listings the third week of december - down
from a normal 300+, and there are bidding wars on just about anything.
Not at all out of the ordinary for a house to go $40,000 over asking
price with several Torontonians fighting over it. Making it pretty
hard for locals to buy a house....
There is only a limitted amount of development land available as most
good farmland is now protected.. There are some half acre lots with
nice 1960's bungalows that would have sold 5 years ago for $500,000 or
so selling for upwards of $600,000 to be bulldozed for the lot - to
build a monster house (McMansion) worth close to $,2,000,000 - or
more.. In other cases, the lot is devided and TWO monsters are built.
It's called intensification and infilling.