“Options available to pay property tax bills” plus 1 more

Options available to pay property tax bills

Posted: 05 Jan 2011 06:02 AM PST

The Lyon County Clerk-Treasurer's office offers several ways for property owners to pay their tax bills.

The bills can be paid in person at the Yerington office; by dropping payments in a drop box outside the Yerington office; by credit card in person or over the phone by calling 775-463-6501; or by mailing payments to the Yerington office at 27 S. Main Street, Yerington, NV 89447.

The clerk-treasurer's office is not-yet accepting payments on-line.

Payments can be made annually, semi-annually or quarterly and there is a 10-day grace period.

Moving walls should resolve court-related issues at jail complex

After meeting with District Court Judge William Rogers and others, Lyon County Manager Jeff Page recently reported to the Lyon County Board of Commissioners during a special meeting that moving some walls could appease several of Judge Rogers' concerns about the planned jail/justice complex design and layout.

In mid-December Rogers wrote a letter criticizing several court design aspects of the project.

Page said he had met with Rogers, Chief Deputy District Attorney Mark Krueger, Commissioner Chuck Roberts, Clerk-Treasurer Nikki Bryan and Roger Sedway, an architect who has been appointed as the county's owner's representative/project manager on the jail construction project.

He said he hoped to have a better report for the commissioners in early January, but moving walls would not increase the project's total square footage.

Page said Krueger had sent the architect a letter with the legal requirements for a jail/court complex, in particular for the court functions. One requirement was a witness room for the justice court and two district courtrooms.

Page noted if design changes were required as a result of legal requirements set forth in Krueger's prior letter, then he felt that shouldn't be charged to the county, that the architect erred in not including those in the prior architectural design layout.

Another concern was to have enough room in the courtrooms for potential jurors for a trial.

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Page added that a secure entry point for the judges' chambers was another issue that was requested and could be changed.

Commission approves county-wide component of master plan

By a 4-0 vote (Commissioner Larry McPherson absent), the Lyon County Board of Commissioners has approved the final draft of the Lyon County Comprehensive Master Plan, County-wide Component.

The board, during a special meeting on Dec. 23, which was called in part to allow Commissioner Phyllis Hunewill to vote before her term expired. This was something that she had previously expressed a desire to vote on.

The item will now be included on the Jan. 11 Lyon County Planning Commission meeting agenda, as Planning Director Rob Loveberg said state law and county code require an amendment to the master plan must return to the PlanCom for a report.

He noted some changes had been made in the version the county board approved from the draft master plan the planning commission changed last July.

The next phase is to start work on the community component of the comprehensive master plan.

County to discuss possible other uses of room tax funding

With staff exploring all options to increase revenues, the Lyon County Board of Commissioners tomorrow (Jan. 6) will discuss possible additional uses of room tax funds collected by the county.

Nevada law stipulates how 1 percent of room tax collected may be used but how the other money may be used isn't so strict. However, the county since the room tax or transient lodging tax ordinance was imposed in 1989 has followed the criteria for use of 5/8 of 1 percent of the tax collected.

Lyon County charges 6 percent on the rental of transient lodging for all areas of the county except the incorporated City of Fernley, which a year ago imposed its own room tax.

Lyon County Comptroller Josh Foli requested this agenda item and said he doesn't have a recommendation but decided to include this budget item to see if the board was interested in any changes in use of room tax revenue, especially in light of the current economic crisis and expected budget cuts due to reduced revenues to the county.

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He noted this request didn't come from the county' current room tax board, which decides on how room tax money is allocated through grants to applicants.

Regarding the room or transient lodging tax collected, state law says at least 1 percent must be charged 3/8 of a percent must be paid to the Nevada Department of Transportation for deposit to the 'Fund for the Promotion of Tourism'. The other 5/8 of a percent must be deposited with the county fair and recreation board (aka Room Tax Board).

That statute goes on to say regarding use of that 5/8 percent by the county, to be used to advertise the resources of that county related to tourism, including available accommodations, transportation, entertainment, natural resources and climate, and to promote special events.

Lyon County imposed its transient lodging or room tax by ordinance which stipulates restrictions on uses of room tax dollars except for the 5/8 percent that goes to the state.

If the county wanted to use the tax revenue for other uses it would require an ordinance amendment.

Foli estimated the money that could possibly be used for other purposes would be about $62,500 for the next fiscal year.

Foli noted one possible other use of room tax funding would be for operational costs and/or capital improvement costs for facilities such as the Lyon County Fairgrounds or Dayton Valley Events Center, and thus save from any general fund moneys that might be used for those purposes.

"The downside to reallocating the funds," Foli wrote, is that the Room Tax Board would then have less money to use for its funding grant cycle. "This would mean that many events in the County would have substantially less money for advertising purposes."

County manager says staff striving for any savings in jail project

Although some who see the estimated price tag of over $20 million might wonder, but Lyon County officials in publicly discussing the Lyon County Jail/Justice Complex project have often talked about keeping the costs down.

County Manager Jeff Page recently said that late last month during a discussion with sheriff's office staff and consultants about security systems for the jail, that "based upon discussions they were able to save a significant amount on security equipment" for the jail.

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He said this was just one example of how they're made efforts to keep the costs of the jail as low as possible, while maintaining a functional facility.

Page noted he'd recently heard concerns about the facility's appearance, related to the fact it will be a metal building structure, also a cost-saving move. He said there was a concern it would look like an onion shed, such as are prevalent in the Yerington area, or an industrial building.

Page said the structure wouldn't be ugly as some seemed to fear, as the metal would be covered. However, he noted a metal building would cost much less than a typical brick and mortar-type construction facility.

While the site preparation work has begun, due to be done early next year, the architect, Clemons Rutherford and Associates of Florida, and CMAR continue to work on the design phase of the jail, the blueprint.

Page said they'd recently meet with the CMAR and architect and discussed things such as the best place to locate the IT equipment and where to put the locks, for example.

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Property Tax Appeals Flood Cities and States

Posted: 04 Jan 2011 02:48 PM PST

As real estate values plunge, many homeowners are appealing property taxes, adding to the financial woes of cities and states

By Jeff Green and Tim Jones

Cities and states, already straining to balance budgets, are in for another shock in 2011 as hordes of property owners appeal tax assessments, demanding lower levies that reflect battered real estate values. Less property tax revenue means more pressure on local governments to cut services, especially public schools and police and fire departments that rely heavily on those taxes.

U.S. home prices have tumbled 30.5 percent below their April 2006 peak, according to the 20-city S&P/Case-Shiller index as of Oct. 31, the latest available figure. That matches the decline in values during the Great Depression's darkest days, from 1925 to 1933, according to Yale University economist Robert J. Shiller, who helped develop the index.

In Michigan, where Governor-elect Rick Snyder has warned that hundreds of towns face financial crises, tax appeals are overflowing at the office of Patricia L. Halm, head of the state Tax Tribunal. "We're just getting swamped," says Halm, 54, who was appointed to the Lansing-based administrative court in 2003. "We're constantly buying new file cabinets to hold all the cases. We even have six surplus file cabinets in the courtroom."

The state's backlog of tax appeals involving levies above $100,000—mostly commercial and industrial properties—shot up to 14,236 this year from an annual average of about 6,000 during the past decade. The backlog of claims for most residential properties, or those with tax bills below $100,000, was at 28,558 at the end of September, the most in the 13 years the state has kept detailed records. An appeal involves the property owner submitting an appraisal and other records to local or state appeals boards or courts to support the claim that a tax assessment is too high.

Clark County, Nev., which includes Las Vegas, had 8,300 appeals last year, up 38 percent from the year before and more than three times the number of appeals in 2008, says Rocky Steele, assistant director of assessment services. "It was a big year, the biggest we've ever had," he says. The county's taxable real estate value for the 2010-2011 fiscal year fell to $184 billion from $263 billion the prior year. The reduction will cost the county about $514 million in lost taxes. Almost all the hotel casinos and major property owners received reductions, Steele says.

Across the country, the situation is similar. New Jersey homeowners, who pay some of the nation's highest real estate taxes, filed a record 18,147 appeals in Tax Court during the fiscal year ending June 30, up 80 percent from fiscal 2007. In Atlantic City, where 11 casinos account for 74 percent of the property tax base, the city has exhausted a reserve for tax appeals that in 2006 held $26 million, according to a Nov. 4 report from Moody's Investors Service (MCO). All Atlantic City casinos have pending property tax appeals, says Moody's, which reduced the city's credit rating to three levels above speculative grade.

The outliers are Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach Counties in Florida, where appeals are declining. They have lowered assessments by about 22 percent from 2008 to 2010 after years of steep drops in home prices.

As the appeals wind through the legal process, assessors will have to adjust taxes to reflect market values, and property tax receipts will have to come down, says Michael A. Pagano, dean of the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "If the appeals are largely successful, they will generate a lot more."

The bottom line: As real estate values plunge, many homeowners are appealing property taxes, adding to the financial woes of cities and states.

Green is a reporter for Bloomberg News. Jones is a reporter for Bloomberg News.

Property Tax

Wednesday, January 5, 2011