[RP TownTalk] Tax Increase

[Rob Oppenheim]

The mayor's proposed budget for Riverdale Park has a 24% average 
increase in property taxes. Some of this increase comes from a 
rise in assessments and some comes from a tax rate increase.
 
Thus, if your assessment doubled (as many did) then your taxes 
will more than double - although this increase may be phased-in 
over several years.
 
What can you do?
 
While the above increase is surprisingly large, it is appropriate to take
a calm and careful look at the proposed budget and judge it accordingly. 

You can discuss this with the mayor and your council person (it is the 
new incoming council that will actually adopt the budget in early June.)
 
You and I can learn more about how this money will be spent and 
you can express your opinions at the public hearing on the budget...
The public hearing on the budget will be Monday May 21 at 7:30 p.m.
at Town Hall. I hope to see you there.
 
If you have the patience you can also read the rest of this email.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(scroll down to see more)

--
--
--
--

The Rate Increase.
 
Ideally, the town would have lowered its tax rate to offset the increase 
in assessments. Instead, the proposal is to actually raise the tax rate 
from 64.1 to 68.7 cents (per $100 of assessed value).
 
This rate increase comes on top of the increase in your assessment. 
 
As an example, if your assessment went from $200,000 to $400,000,
then your town property taxes will more than double, going from $1,282 
to $2,748, an increase of $1,466 per year.
 
The Homestead Credit Phase-in.
 
Thanks to the Homestead Credit Act, most owner-occupied homes 
will see this increase automatically phased in over several years. 

The act phases-in large assessment increases at 10% per year. 
However some housing, such as rental housing and houses that 
were recently purchased are excluded - for them the full increase 
is immediate. 
 
Homes that qualify for the Homestead Credit will see about an 18%
increase in the Riverdale Park portion of their real estate taxes - roughly 
$200 to $400 more per year plus an increase in the state and county 
property taxes too. NOTE: This estimate could be way off. (Your total 
real estate tax bill is roughly triple the Riverdale Park amount.)
 
You can learn more about the Homestead Credit on page 17 of the March 
2007 Town Crier. Which is available at Town Hall or online at www.rptc.us 
Below is a direct link to that Crier (then scroll down to page 17).
http://www.ci.riverdale-park.md.us/rptc/2007/Crier2007-03.pdf
 
 
Budget Details
 
To learn more about the budget, you can look at the attached file, which
has parts of the proposed budget in it. The budget report is 7 pages long.
It is not available to me in electronic form, so I entered two of the pages 
(the summary page and the revenue page) into a spreadsheet manually. 
I also added information to clarify the tax change. 
 
The proposed budget for the next fiscal year is available at town hall in 
paper form. Perhaps if citizens request it, then the budget will also be 
posted on the web site (as it was last year).
 
You can learn more about the county assessments and the constant 
yield tax rates here:
http://www.gazette.net/stories/050307/prinnew174541_32323.shtml
 
 
Why I released this email
 
I have a lot more to learn about this budget proposal. I decided to 
release this email now because I felt it important to give as much 
notice as possible to our citizens.
 
Rob Oppenheim
Outgoing Ward One Councilman, Riverdale Park
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://riverdale-park.org/pipermail/towntalk/attachments/20070513/d78f2e0c/attachment-0003.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Budget-07-08-extract.xls
Type: application/vnd.ms-excel
Size: 23040 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://riverdale-park.org/pipermail/towntalk/attachments/20070513/d78f2e0c/attachment-0003.xls>