“Collin County tax roll reveals property values dropped less than expected” plus 3 more |
- Collin County tax roll reveals property values dropped less than expected
- 'Saral' property tax form on the anvil in Delhi
- Property tax on natural gas a simple matter of fairness
- Property tax bills being mailed out
| Collin County tax roll reveals property values dropped less than expected Posted: 28 Jul 2010 12:40 AM PDT 12:00 AM CDT on Wednesday, July 28, 2010Collin County property values dropped in the past year but not as sharply as had been predicted, according to the county's certified tax roll released Tuesday. Countywide, taxable values fell 1.5 percent to $71.2 billion. In May, the Collin Central Appraisal District had predicted values would fall by 4.4 percent. "We're absolutely delighted," County Judge Keith Self said. "This will make our job easier." Cities, school districts and the county use the certified tax roll to gauge how much property tax revenue they will have for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. Higher appraisals mean the taxing entities have more money to spend. Lower taxable values cause officials to consider budget cuts or tax increases. Most Collin County towns and school districts saw property values decline in the past year, according to the final tax roll. For instance, Plano's taxable values dropped 3.3 percent, Frisco's 2.3 percent and McKinney's .2 percent. Allen's values, meanwhile, rose .9 percent. Frisco, which has experienced rapid growth in the past decade, is accustomed to steady appraisal increases, not decreases. "We're still focused on providing excellent city services," Frisco Mayor Maher Maso said. "We're not reducing services." About a third of the city is in Denton County, which also saw a decline in property values. Maso said he was pleased that Frisco's tax roll fell less than the 4.2 percent decline predicted in May. "We're approaching it as good news," Maso said. "We understand people are still facing a lot of challenges. That's why we're being very conservative." McKinney school officials had prepared for a 2 percent drop in taxable values, while the final roll shows a .5 percent drop, said Steve Fortenberry, the district's chief financial officer. "There will be very little impact on the operating fund budget since state aid will float up or down to offset any gains or losses in local property tax collections," he said. School officials in Frisco and Plano have discussed budget cuts because of the declining property values. The Plano district expects to raise the property tax rate 2.5 cents to $1.35 per $100 valuation. The increase will help pay down more than $1 billion in debt incurred from bond sales. In the Frisco school district, board members have discussed raising the tax rate 3 cents to $1.42 per $100 valuation. The tax revenue increase also would help pay off bond debt, not cover daily operations. While most Collin County towns and school districts saw tax roll declines, a handful saw increases. The largest property value jumps were in Prosper (8.8 percent), Fairview (7.4 percent) and Lavon (5.6 percent). The towns with the sharpest drops in appraisals were Josephine (4.9 percent), Blue Ridge (4.3 percent) and Farmersville (3.8 percent). The appraisal district also released average home values throughout Collin County. The highest average value was $409,183 in Parker, while the lowest was $66,350 in Blue Ridge. Among the four largest cities, Frisco had the highest average home value at $262,195, followed by Allen ($218,527), McKinney ($207,412) and Plano ($196,643). Staff writers Matthew Haag and Sam Hodges contributed to this report. Five Filters featured article: "Peace Envoy" Blair Gets an Easy Ride in the Independent. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. | |||||||||||
| 'Saral' property tax form on the anvil in Delhi Posted: 28 Jul 2010 07:55 AM PDT Relatives mourn the deaths of those killed in a plane crash in Pak U.S. actress Angelina Jolie gives autograph to fans in South Korea Sachin Tendulkar hits his 48th test century against SLanka in SL British Prime Minister David Cameron at Raj Bhavan in Bangalore Vehicles move on a flooded road after rainfall in Hyderabad Area Commander of CPI-M surrenders at a Jharkhand police post England's cricketers during a net practice session in England Devotees get sweets at a sufi saint's shrine near LoC in Kashmir Mulayam Singh Yadav during the Monsoon session in New Delhi Devanand interacts with the media during an event in Mumbai Ramdev during the shooting of a film on his life in Haridwar Women labourers coming back after day's work in Noida Five Filters featured article: "Peace Envoy" Blair Gets an Easy Ride in the Independent. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. | |||||||||||
| Property tax on natural gas a simple matter of fairness Posted: 27 Jul 2010 09:31 PM PDT There has been much discussion about a natural gas tax being reinstated in Pennsylvania. This is not a new tax. As superintendent of the Bald Eagle Area School District, a rural school district that has the lowest tax base in Centre County, here are the facts surrounding that debate as they apply to the students and taxpayers in our district. While no one likes to pay taxes, Bald Eagle Area must rely on tax monies to educate our children. Taxation is the method Pennsylvania has always used to fund public education, and we receive about 35 percent of our education funding from property taxes, which are paid by the businesses and community members within our district. For more than 100 years prior to 2002, the natural gas industry in Pennsylvania also paid property taxes to the schools to help pay for the education of our children. For example, in 2001, Bald Eagle Area received about $65,000 in property taxes paid by natural gas companies operating shallow gas wells in our district. But in 2002, due to a state Supreme Court decision, all the natural gas companies operating in Pennsylvania suddenly no longer needed to pay property taxes, even though all of the natural gas producers in the states surrounding Pennsylvania — and in the major producing states such as Texas and Louisiana — continued to be taxed. This year, if we were still collecting property taxes on the long-standing shallow gas wells in our school district, Bald Eagle Area would receive about an additional $1 million in property tax revenue per year. (This revenue would be from taxation of the shallow wells, not from the Marcellus Shale play; the property tax would be paid by the gas industry, not by the person who owns the property where the wells were being drilled.) Consequently, other industries and community members in the Bald Eagle Area School District are paying more property taxes to fund our children's education because the natural gas companies drilling within our school district boundaries are enjoying a property tax-free ride. There is now movement, and even a budget deal commitment, in Harrisburg to institute a severance tax, not a property tax, on the natural gas companies operating in Pennsylvania. If a severance tax is passed by Harrisburg, the money collected from these natural gas wells will, in all probability, be distributed throughout the commonwealth. If a property tax is passed, the money collected will stay at the local level — in the school districts, counties, boroughs or townships where the natural gas is actually extracted. That seems fair to me. After all, since education is funded with local property taxes, why would we ever remove a class of local commercial property from the tax rolls? There also is discussion about excluding the shallow-type gas wells from taxation. These are the same wells that I mentioned previously, that, if they were currently taxed, would provide our small school district with about an additional $1 million per year. The folks in Harrisburg may say those shallow wells are too small to matter, but they certainly would matter to us. Since long before the Marcellus play became the buzzword, I have been campaigning for the reinstatement of this natural gas property tax. To me, the reinstatement of a property tax on all natural gas production in Pennsylvania is a simple matter of fairness to Bald Eagle Area students, taxpayers and the businesses operating within our school district that pay property taxes. Our state legislature has sanctified the natural gas industry by allowing its operators to have a property tax-free status over the past eight years, a status that should be reserved for churches and other religious institutions. This legalized avoidance of property tax by the natural gas industry is costing millions of lost dollars in revenue to the Bald Eagle Area School District and 200 other Pennsylvania rural school districts, 42 counties and hundreds of local municipalities. In order to continue to provide a good-quality education for our children, the Bald Eagle Area School District must recoup this revenue shortfall, unfortunately, from other local businesses and residents. Daniel Fisher has been superintendent of the Bald Eagle Area School District since 1990 and is on the board of directors of the Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small Schools.
We ask that you refrain from profanity, hate speech, personal comments, spam, and other remarks that are off point. In order to post comments, you must be a registered user of CentreDaily.com. Your username will show along with the comments you post. Thank you for taking the time to offer your thoughts. Five Filters featured article: "Peace Envoy" Blair Gets an Easy Ride in the Independent. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. | |||||||||||
| Property tax bills being mailed out Posted: 28 Jul 2010 06:02 AM PDT Published: New Castle County residents should receive their property and State school bills in the mail over the next week. The bills, which were mailed today, are due September 30. Many residents do not see the bills, which are commonly paid out of mortgage escrow accounts. Those without mortgages do receive the bills. You must be a Registered User to view the rest of the story.
Five Filters featured article: "Peace Envoy" Blair Gets an Easy Ride in the Independent. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. | |||||||||||
| You are subscribed to email updates from Yahoo! News Search Results for property tax To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
0 comments:
Post a Comment