Quote:
Originally Posted by The Yen Man
How does property values going up help city hall though? They're still mandated to collect their total property tax goal. Home values just determine how much of the pie you're paying relative to the rest of the city.
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Indeed. With revenue neutral calculation for budgeting, rising property values aren't a "benefit" to City hall per se. If all property values went up, the calcuation would simply adjust the mill-rate down (this has happened in hot economic times) to collect the same amount of money as the previous year. Then the budgeting process determines whether more money is needed to fulfill budget needs to cover new programs, inflation, growth, etc.
Generally speaking rising property values are a good thing for a place, it can signal some measure of economic health. Certainly better than the alternative (like in downtown) which as lost $17b in assessed value. With revenue neutral calculations that ends up causing redistribution to properties maintaining or losing less value that's problematic.