Tax Rates

The Tribune had an article today about city tax levies. This is always of interest to me, because I like to see how we stack up to other communities. The article discusses the city levy only. The actual property tax you pay goes to a lot of entities.

It's not in the article, but looking at my last tax statement, for a Roland resident, 30% of your property tax bill goes to the city. The school is the biggest claimant on your property tax, getting 47% (plus they also have an income tax surcharge as well). Then Story County gets 18%. Then at 2% or less is the assessor, DMACC, Story County Hospital, the Ag Extension, and TB and Bangs.

The city council has to make those decisions on how much to tax, and provide an appropriate level of services. For example, having a pool costs us money that a city like Gilbert does not have. What "niceness" of streets do we want to have? Nicer streets cost more money. We could have our own police department, but that would cost more money.

But we also have to consider if being cheap, or not spending money hurts the town in the long run. For example, gravel roads don't cost much, but I'm sure everybody's property values would sink too, and we obviously don't want that.

Local decision making affects the council quite a bit. A US Congressman can vote for a billion dollar project, and it doesn't really affect him that much in his pocketbook. But on our city council, our spending decisions hit our pocketbook at the same level as everybody else in town.

So anyway, back to the article. I think Roland stacks up very favorably with other towns in the county. We are in the lower half of levy rates in the county. We are at $9.29. The two towns in Story County closest in size to us, Slater and Gilbert, are at $14.35 and $10.89 repsectively.

Another note to all this. Iowa's property tax method is very confusing. There is a rollback, which is now around 60%. So if you have a $100,000 house, its value is rolled back to 60% value, in this case, to $60,000. Then you are taxed on that amount. So for Roland's share, take the $9.29 times each thousand of rolled back valuation ($9.29 times 60). So for a $100,000 valued house in Roland, $557 in property tax is going to the city.

HERE is the article. I endorse reading this, it is very interesting to see where towns all stack up.