More Reassessment

St. Louis County Executive Charlie A. Dooley and his staff have rethought, reconfigured and rejiggered their December estimate that property tax assessments would drop by only 2 to 3 percent. Under a barrage of criticism from the public, the county came up with a way to make the new assessments more closely reflect plunging real estate values.

On Tuesday, county officials announced that upon further review, the median residential property tax assessment would be down 9 percent. “Median” means half the county’s 365,000 residential properties will see assessments drop by more than 9 percent and half by less than that.

That’s still far below the estimated 19 percent drop in median home value in the county between November 2007 and November 2008. But 9 percent is a little closer to reality, even though it will cause huge budget problems in many taxing jurisdictions.

St. Louis County, for example, keeps only 6.7 per cent of the $1 billion in residential property taxes it collects, passing the rest to the state, some municipalities, schools, fire districts, library districts and other taxing jurisdictions. But that 6.7 percent accounts for about a quarter of the county’s $504 million budget.

Depending on where you live, you could still get a shock when you open your tax bill in May, even if your neighbors just took a beating on the house they sold. That’s particularly true if you live in a school district that decides it will “roll up” its tax rate to avoid having to cut its budget.

Tax jurisdictions are allowed by state law to keep their budgets stable year-to-year. So if assessments go down, rates can go up, thus keeping the total revenue about even.

The county has, in effect, passed the bucks — or non bucks — to the taxing districts. Now they get the job of deciding how much people will have to pay in property taxes. What could have been one giant countywide fight will now be multiple local fights. School boards, city councils, fire boards and other administrative bodies should gird for battle.

The impact will be greatest in the county’s 20 school districts, which receive about 55 percent of the property tax revenue. A few of those districts already are at their maximum allowable tax rate, but most can still “roll up” their tax rates to keep revenue stable. Generally school boards are teacher-friendly (teachers being more keenly interested in school board elections than most folks) and can be expected to resist cutting their budgets.

It can be argued that this is the wrong point in the nation’s history to cut educational budgets. The workforce for the future will have to be smarter, more literate and more computer savvy than at any time in history. Whacking school budgets is no way to do that, nor are economically-stressed schools particularly good for property values.

At the same time, the recession is causing real pain. The last thing anyone who has been laid off or has been hit with higher health care costs needs is a property-tax rate increase on a home he can’t sell. This is a time for shared sacrifice; before rolling up tax rates, local school boards and administrators must be sure that every dollar is being spent wisely.

County property owners who want to get ahead of the curve can see their homes’ new assessments online at www.stlouisco.com. You can also reserve a place in line for an assessment appeal by calling (314) 615-5000. School board meetings need no reservations.

But you’ll have to until May to see what your tax bill will be, because schools and other tax districts have until then to decide their tax rates for the coming year.

Once they inform the county, the revenue department will mail homeowners their new assessed value along with an estimate of what their tax bill will be. The actual bills are mailed in the fall and are payable by year’s end. Maybe the recession will be over by then. We wouldn’t count on it.