In late March, several Juneau residents expressed concern about how the city\u2019s generally increasing property assessments would impact their property taxes. The Assembly has now answered that question.<\/p>\n
The Assembly set the mill rate at 10.66 mills with a 5\u20134 vote at its meeting Monday night. That means that a Juneau resident who owns a $300,000 home will pay $3,198 in property taxes.<\/p>\n
The 10.66 mill rate is slightly lower than last year\u2019s mill rate of 10.76, meaning that if your home\u2019s assessed value didn\u2019t increase at all from last year, you\u2019ll be paying $30 less in property taxes.<\/p>\n
For the majority of homeowners, however, assessed values went up.<\/p>\n
The total assessed property value for all homes and business in the city increased by 4.4 percent over last year. And the assessed values of residential homes went up by about 6 percent, City Manager Rorie Watt said Monday night at the CBJ Assembly meeting.<\/p>\n
Even though the mill rate dropped, the city\u2019s Finance Director Bob Bartholomew told the Empire that most people can expect a slight property tax increase.<\/p>\n
His original recommendation to the Assembly was to lower the mill rate to 10.51 mills \u2014 .15 mills less than the rate it adopted.<\/p>\n
In December, he planned for a 2 percent increase in assessed property values. If the mill rate remained unchanged, that would have yielded a $1 million increase in property taxes for the city.<\/p>\n
When Bartholomew found out the assessed property values had actually increased by 4.4 percent, yielding a potential $2.2 million increase in tax revenue under the old mill rate, he decided to lower the rate.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t need that much revenue to balance the budget, so we backed off the mill rate,\u201d Bartholomew told the Empire in April. \u201cThe average person will see property tax increases, but they won\u2019t be as large as the change in their property values.\u201d<\/p>\n
At a May 11 Finance Committee meeting, the Assembly decided, with a split vote, to reject Bartholomew\u2019s proposal and leave the mill rate at 10.76 mills. Staring down the state\u2019s $4 billion budget gap and mounting fiscal uncertainty, the Assembly decided to be safe rather than sorry.<\/p>\n
Assembly member Loren Jones lowered that rate by a tenth of a mill Monday night, a change that Assembly member Jesse Kiehl supported but said didn\u2019t go as far as he would like.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a philosophical problem with taxing at a mill rate higher than what we need for the operations of government,\u201d Kiehl said, speaking in favor of Jones\u2019 amendment. \u201cI\u2019m willing to compromise, but I think it\u2019s important that we not take up the slack left by lowering the debt service mill levy as we pay off bonds without a good reason.\u201d<\/p>\n
Predicting the arguments of several of his peers, including Assembly members Kate Troll and Maria Gladziszewski, Kiehl said the state\u2019s impending fiscal woes are not a good enough reason.<\/p>\n
He said, \u201cWe\u2019re OK for the hard times coming.\u201d<\/p>\n
The mill rate the Assembly set will yield $48.7 million in property taxes. That\u2019s $300,000 less than leaving the mill rate as it currently sits but $700,000 more than Bartholomew\u2019s suggested rate would yield.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the mill-rate vote break-down:<\/p>\n
In favor of Jones\u2019 amendment lowering the mill rate from 10.76 to 10.66 mills<\/p>\n
\u2022 Mary Becker<\/p>\n
\u2022 Loren Jones<\/p>\n
\u2022 Maria Gladziszewski<\/p>\n
\u2022 Jesse Kiehl<\/p>\n
\u2022 Ken Koelsch<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Opposed to Jones\u2019 amendement<\/p>\n
\u2022 Jamie Bursell<\/p>\n
\u2022 Jerry Nankervis<\/p>\n
\u2022 Kate Troll<\/p>\n
\u2022 Debbie White<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In favor of setting the mill rate as amended<\/p>\n
\u2022 Mary Becker<\/p>\n
\u2022 Loren Jones<\/p>\n
\u2022 Maria Gladziszewski<\/p>\n
\u2022 Jesse Kiehl<\/p>\n
\u2022 Ken Koelsch<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Opposed to setting the mill rate as amended<\/p>\n
\u2022 Jamie Bursell<\/p>\n
\u2022 Jerry Nankervis<\/p>\n
\u2022 Kate Troll<\/p>\n
\u2022 Debbie White<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact reporter Sam DeGrave at 523-2279 or sam.degrave@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In late March, several Juneau residents expressed concern about how the city\u2019s generally increasing property assessments would impact their property taxes. The Assembly has now answered that question. The Assembly set the mill rate at 10.66 mills with a 5\u20134 vote at its meeting Monday night. That means that a Juneau resident who owns a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":3516,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-3515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3515"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=3515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}