Quote:
Originally Posted by John Mercier
Each category has a budget that is enacted. The category also has offsets - other revenue (grants/etc). The DRA takes the budget minuses the offsets and that supplies them with what must be raised by the property tax.
That amount is then divided the total property tax within the district (gets a little more complex with multi-district schools due to agreed upon funding formulas).
So if the town needs to raise $50M per budget, but has offsets of $5M, then the property tax must raise $45M. The DRA takes the $45M and divides it by total property valuation within the town. That sets the municipal rate.
The DRA continues down the line until each category rate is set. The category rates added together is the total rate that we are looking at.
The total rate is multiplied by assessed value (fair market value) divided by 1000 and that is your tax.
So a town budget can stay exactly the same... but the loss of a revenue offset can make the amount to be raised by property taxes higher.
The same can happen with the school and county budgets.
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The town budget always goes up. But to your point, the tax rate is a ratio calculated to collect what " must be raised by the property tax." The tax rate is a meaningless number to determine if or by how much taxes have gone up or down.
Once again, this is a very important point. All the taxes we pay are voted into being, or law, by either town meeting or our representatives. Taxes do not increase due to new assessments. That is unless your property has appreciated faster than the average of everyone else's increase, but that's another discussion.