County Lowering Levy, 'Tax Asking'
Mills County has completed the buy-out process for rural properties that were flooded in 2019.
As Mills County officials continue the process of finalizing the 2022-23 budget, there appears to be some good news on the horizon for taxpayers.
“Next year, the levy will be dropping down to 10.41 from 11.33 ( per $1,000 taxable valuation),” Mills County Auditor Carol Robertson said last week. “Not only are we lowering the levy, we’re also lowering the tax-asking, which generally doesn’t go that way.”
Mills County saw its valuations increase by over $30 million this year – from $1,092,617,804 to $1,123,313,950. The increase in valuations was due largely to a January 2021 assessment of property that resulted in substantial valuation increases for many individual property owners across the county. The new valuations, determined by the 2021 assessment, will be the basis for property taxes payable in the Fall of 2022 and Spring of 2023.
Mills County Assessor Christina Govig said in March 2021 that the residential housing market in the area had experienced an unprecedented rise in values in recent years and the trend continued in 2021, resulting in the increase in valuations.
“It goes by sales and sales are very high right now. It’s a seller’s market – there’s more buyers out there than property, which is driving the prices up,” she said. “With them selling so high, we’ve had some (sales) $100,000 or more over our assessment values. We have to be at market value, so as the sales rise, the assements rise.”
Robertson said some of the “buy-out” properties from the 2019 flood event have yet to be removed from the county tax rolls.
“I really thought PJ (Pacific Junction valuations) wouldn’t be so high and Platteville,” Robertson said. “Then, when we reflected back on that, Platteville, too – it still is only a partial with them. Everything isn’t completely off. There’s some values there that we still captured that aren’t 100 percent gone. Next year, we should see 100 percent gone.”
Robertson said the county has completed its buy-out of flooded properties in rural Mills County and that’s one of the major reasons the county’s “tax-asking” is down in the proposed 2022-23 budget by over $715,000. The end of a CDBG (Community Development Block Grant) watershed grant for the Nishnabotna River and a reduction in mental health service costs are also contributing factors, she said.
“The reason is, we’re done with the buy-outs now. That process is done,” Robertson said. “Those monies fluctuated back and forth. We have a CDBG grant, the watershed project on the Nishnabotna that ends this year. Those are two big things that we won’t have in our budget.
“We’re also losing the mental health monies. That comes from the state now. We are no longer levying tax for that. The state determined that they thought they can handle all that funding.”
The $25.9 million budget will include the second half of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dollars the county is receiving for COVID-19-related recovery costs. Mills County has been awarded a total of $2.9 million in ARPA funds.
A public hearing on Mills County’s proposed budget for 2022-23 is scheduled for Tuesday, March 15, 10:30 a.m., in the county supervisors meeting room at the Mills County Courthouse in Glenwood.