The Commerce City Council voted to raise the property tax rate ever so slightly Monday night, but with so many residential re-evaluations, most city residents will probably find their property tax bills slightly lower than they were last year.
By a unanimous vote, the council set the 2011 rate at 2.306 mills — 1.6 one-hundredths of a mill higher than last year.
City manager Clarence Bryant estimated that a resident with a $100,000 piece of property would pay $2.80 more with the 2011 rate than under the 2010 rate.
“But if your assessment went down, it should be a wash,” observed Ward 4 councilman Clark Hill.
Accounting manager James Wascher reached a similar conclusion.
“The only way it would be an increase is if your assessment went up,” he said.
Bryant said the rate was set to bring in “the amount of money in the budget you passed,” which is $403,167, a decrease of $3,188 from what the 2010 property tax levy brought in.
Property taxes account for 7.8 percent of the city’s General Fund revenue, but only 1.6 percent of the total $25,037,166 budget for the fiscal year. Approximately 60 percent of the city’s revenue and expenses comes from its utility departments.
Commerce’s residential tax digest dropped, but its commercial and industrial digest increased almost enough to offset the residential dip, thanks largely to the fact that Northridge Medical Center, which was formerly not on the digest because as a government owned facility it was exempt from taxes. Now that it’s privately owned, like every other business it is subject to ad valorem taxes.
City residents should receive their property tax bills — which will include tax levies from the city school system, county government and state government — by late November. They will have 60 days to pay the bills.
The Commerce Board of Education previously set its tax rate at 17.75 mills for the seventh year in a row.
This corrects a typography mistake in the print version of the Commerce News which had the tax rate at 3.06 mills.
