Lone protester shows up at budget hearings
Staff writer
Hillsboro and Marion school boards and Peabody City Council, conducted budget hearings Monday night, and only one person showed up to speak.
A woman who lives at the county lake attended the Marion-Florence school board meeting seven minutes after the meeting started, board president Nick Kraus said.
The board already had approved exceeding the revenue-neutral rate.
During a subsequent budget hearing, Kraus asked whether she had anything to say about the budget.
She answered that she didn’t have anything to say, he said. The board passed the budget.
Later, when the meeting went into an executive session and onlookers were leaving the meeting room, she spoke.
“I’m on a fixed income, and you’re going to raise our taxes without us getting to say anything?” Kraus said she asked.
Kraus said she hadn’t spoken up during the hearing when she had the opportunity.
She said her husband had recently died, and he had always taken care of business such as paying taxes, so this was the first time she’d had to deal with it.
He told her she had the option to pay her taxes under protest and see whether she could get her taxes reduced through that process.
When someone pays taxes under protest, they have to pay in full and fill out a protest form. The protest form is passed to the appraiser.
A payment under protest is really no different from an appraisal appeal done in the spring, appraiser Nikki Reid said.
“We’re looking at value, not taxes,” she said. “I can’t lower the tax. We only have control over the appraisal.”
If the appraiser’s office and the property owner agree to reduce an appraisal, the new value is sent to the clerk and treasurer offices so taxes on the property can be adjusted.
At Hillsboro’s school board meeting, no one came to speak about the revenue-neutral rate or the budget. Both were approved.
Peabody City Council members approved both exceeding a revenue-neutral budget and the budget after nobody in a small audience spoke during hearings for both were held.
Because real estate appraisals have increased sharply, most taxpayers will see larger tax bills even if tax rates stay the same.
Increases will vary by property but on average they will be roughly the same amount as the percentage increase above the revenue-neutral rate.
That rate is the mill levy at which a taxing entity receives the same amount of property tax money next year as it received this year.
The Marion-Florence schools set their tax rate for next year at 52.652 mills, up 1.3% from this year’s tax rate and 7.1% above the revenue-neutral rate.
The Hillsboro schools set their tax rate at 58.917 mills, down 4.7% from this year’s rate but up 0.5% from the revenue-neutral rate.
Peabody set its tax rate at 87.345 mills, down 3.1% from this year’s but up 8.2% from revenue neutrality.
On a home valued at $100,000, the tax bill for schools in the Marion-Florence district would be $677.55. In the Hillsboro district it would be $604.81. An identically valued home’s tax bill for city purposes in Peabody would be $1,004.47.