AUBURN – Phasing in the city’s new property values could push back the due date for taxes by up to a month, according to city staff.
“It’s a time-consuming job,” said Laurie Smith, assistant city manager. “There’s a lot of variables and differences between individual properties, if we phase in values. We’d need to check each one before we’d be ready.”
Councilors are scheduled to discuss phasing in property values during a workshop meeting tonight. Phasing in the values could mean lower tax bills for many Auburn homeowners.
“We hope we can get some consensus from the council,” Smith said. “We’d need as much time as possible to get ready.”
The city unveiled preliminary property values in November, mailing notices and tax bill calculations to Auburn homeowners. The notices showed tax bills doubling and tripling in some cases and ignited a tax reform movement. Assessors have been meeting with property owners to review their property values since then.
The new values call for a property tax rate at $20.88 per $1,000 of value, based on the budget councilors adopted last month. More than half of Auburn homeowners would see their values increase by 50 to 100 percent under that plan. It would mean steeper tax bills for those homeowners.
Phasing the revaluation would mean taking only part of the new value this year. Instead of $1.89 billion, the city’s new assessed valuation would be set as low as $1.6 billion. Councilors have discussed using an 80 percent value rate.
Once councilors select the citywide value, assessing staff need to begin reviewing individual properties, comparing new property values to the old city valuation.
“Each property is different,” Smith said. “For some, the land value increased a lot, but their buildings didn’t. The end result will be different for everyone.”
She figured it would take city assessing staff as much as six weeks get the new individual property values and tax bills prepared. That would be about the end of August. The first tax payment is normally due mid-September.
“But we know we’ll have to delay that if we phase in values,” she said. “We want to give people a reasonable amount of time to prepare before they have to pay their bills.”
Tax bills could be ready later this month if the council decides to levy taxes based on full property values.
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