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Property values on the rise By Philip Jankowski Property values for Taylor rose again last year, yet still remain behind the county average. While Williamson County’s total residential value climbed 17.7 percent during the 2006-2007 fiscal year, Taylor’s rose only 8.3 percent. In the 2005-2006 fiscal year, those values rose 11.8 percent for the county and 3.9 percent for Taylor, according to Williamson County’s Chief Appraiser Bill Carroll. Values for the current year have not yet been calculated, Carroll said. Those numbers make up integral portions of the city’s and Taylor ISD’s budgets, though they affect the city’s budget more directly. When property values in Taylor rise, the amount of property tax collected rises. Last year, 37.2 percent of the cities budget came from property tax, Taylor’s Director of Finance Rosemarie Dennis said. Property taxes made up about 35 percent of the school district’s budget, Bill Mikulencak, business manager for TISD, said. While the district has seen a larger portion of revenue from property tax spilling into their budget, Mikulencak said any extra money collected from taxes means a proportionate amount of state funds subtracted. “The city gets the benefit of higher property values, we don’t,” he said. Every school district has a target revenue mandated by a statewide formula, Mikulencak said. That number limits the amount of money the school district can receive. TISD current budget is targeted at a revenue of $25 million. “Myself and every other school district probably hopes the formula is changed, because they do not currently account for inflation and increased fuel costs and other expenses,” he said. Taylor residents currently pay 79 cents per every $100 of their total property value. That number fluctuates “all over the place” for the county, Williamson County Tax Assessor Deborah Hunt said, and Taylor pays the second highest property tax rate in the county. The amount residents have to pay is determined by a complicated formula, Hunt said, but it more or less is based on the total property value of the city versus the amount of total expenditures of the city. The formula takes all payments the city has to make into account, including interest on debts and bonds. In the county, Jarrell has the lowest property tax, at 14 cents per $100, and Granger the highest, at 83 cents per $100. Taylor’s total value is about $634 million and from that the city collected roughly $5 million in property taxes. Hutto’s total value is $625 million with a levy of a little more than $3 million. Hutto paid 49 cents per $100 in property taxes last year, according to Hunt. The second largest portion of the city’s budget comes from sales tax. Retail-heavy city’s like Georgetown and Round Rock do not have as high of property tax rate because both collect significantly more from sales tax, according to Hunt. “Retail and sales tax helps defer property tax costs, but it’s not as reliable,” Hunt said. “Sales tax is down across the state, so it’s hard to budget and anticipate (revenue) because sometimes times are good and sometimes, like now, they’re bad with gas prices everyone is being cautious.” The Williamson County Appraisal District determines how much property values rise and fall—they are usually up—through appraisals done each year. The state requires them to be done every three years, Carroll said, but with how much property values change year to year, his office reappraises every property each year. Sometimes these appraisals can lead to disputes when homeowners feel their property has been overvalued, making what they owe in taxes more than what they feel is necessary. The appraisal district has a 15-member review board made up of private citizens completely independent of the appraisal district, Carroll said. Upset property owners can protest the appraised value of their property. Carroll said about 41 percent of protests result in an adjustment to their property’s value. Currently the appraisal district is in “informal protest mode” as disputes come in. Protests must be filed by June 1 or within two weeks after the appraisal is done, whichever date is later, Carroll said. Review board meetings start June 3.
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