Post #27 Rough 2011 Garwood Property Tax Impact 3/22/11

The 3 numbers (BOE, muni, county) are basically in now, just a little tweaking and clarification. Here's my latest appraisal of them for an average Garwood assessed house at $104,000. (assessment has been creeping up from $100k due to the Mews sales figures).

From thee BOE prelim budget review report in the March BOE mtg: The budget hasnt been approved yet by the county supt but good chance it will stay the same: (rounded numbers)

The BOE tax impact from the main budget will be a negative ($35). There will be a Question #2: This will be making the half day K into full day K, adding instrumental and extracurriculum courses-(all these are not state mandated). If voted yes, this will add an increase of +$72.

If budget is voted yes and the Q#2 is voted yes the overall tax increase will be approx -$35+$72= +$37 total.

Nice tiny number although as usual I have issues at how the BOE arrived at it. Issues I question: 1) If the budget cap is 2% which is around $120 dollars and the total impact is +$37, why did they have to have a question #2? 2) If the budget is voted down, does that make question #2 moot since there is not a budget for it to be attached to? 3) Why did we cannabalize $200,000 out of the capital projects surplus fund to offset the base budget. Per Mr Bolil, this is acceptable but it is a one time deal and sets precedence that the rest of the $500k left in that fund will now be used up in the next few years. This would leave nothing for capital improvements if they want to open Washingtone school. My guess at this finagling was to make qeustion #2 look good since the total tax impact is "only" +$37. This is called politics and shouldn't be. We will of course bring this all up at the special BOE budget hearing March 27th(date?).

Sue Groning, (& Mr Bolil, et al) had an arduous task in the budget committee spending a lot of manhours so I thank her for all the time freely volunteered by her adnt he committee.


Now as for the muni end tax impact although not approved or futher adjusted we are looking at $108 impact per avg assessed home. This is approximately a 5% increase. There was a budget workshop on 3/7/11 and the mayor said she would like to see a smaller number. Surplus and all the hidden costs seem to be a sticking point among the committee people. There will be a formal budget hearing sometime in late april early may, so the public can really ask the questions. We commend councilman Keith Sluka, who was not on the budget committee, for asking many probing questions at the workshop. He showed true concern.


The county tax impact end was just released and is going thru budget hearings so it is not finalized; They are raising total county taxes by $16.5 mill which is a 6% increase and will as usual will be spread across the 21 towns based on the prior years' assessment from home sales. Since county taxes are assessed on true sales home values, GW avg home sales from the previous 2 years have been creeping up due to MEWs sales so we are probably looking at something around +$100-$125 range but nowhere is it finalized per town yet. Open space trust fund may add couple of dollars also.

That puts the rough total 3 parts tax impact including BOE Q#2 of roughly +$250 for avg assessed GW home. The beleaguered taxpayers continue to grin and bear it.