Floyd County property taxes would decline under current budget proposal

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

Most Floyd County property owners will see a lower tax bill as the part of the county’s share in the next fiscal year if decisions tentatively agreed to at the Board of Supervisors meeting this week hold.

The board will continue the budget and property tax discussion at its regular meeting Monday morning, March 6, and may set a public hearing date for the 2023-24 fiscal year budget that will take effect July 1.

Often a taxing body can lower levy rates and still collect more taxes because total taxable valuations increased. In Floyd County’s case, the taxable valuation decreased just slightly, and the proposed levy rate is lower, so the combination will result in the county collecting more than half a million dollars less for the next fiscal year than the current year, if the latest numbers end up being the final numbers.

Total county property taxes collected for the current year were originally estimated at $8,814,514. The proposed total for fiscal year 2023-34 is $8,159,350, or more than $655,164 less.

The levy rate for general services – the rate that all property owners in the county pay – would decline from the current $6.913 per $1,000 of assessed taxable valuation to $6.187, a 10.5% decrease.

The rural services levy will fall by a tiny amount, from $3.65 per $1,000 to $3.644, a drop of 18 hundredths of a percent.

The rural services levy is the amount extra that people living in the rural part of the county pay for such things as law enforcement, road clearing, county libraries, etc., the type of things that people who live in the incorporated cities in the county pay for through their city property taxes.

One reason for the steep drop in the general supplemental and countywide total levies is because those categories were significantly higher than usual in the current fiscal year to make up for an error in the budgeting process the previous year.

An error in the maximum tax resolution in 2021 mistakenly repeated that year’s tax numbers instead of using the proposed new fiscal year 2021-22 numbers, resulting in the county collecting more than a million dollars less for last fiscal year than it had planned on.

Because of that reduction in the amount of taxes it could collect last fiscal year, the county had to dip deeply into its carry-over balance, and the rates for the current fiscal year were raised to build those carryover amounts back up to the 20% to 25% that the county typically tries to maintain to have enough money to pay expenses when the new fiscal year begins July 1, until property tax payments start coming in in the fall.

The proposed budget for the next fiscal year would not make a customary transfer to the county Secondary Roads Department from the rural services fund, which would have been about $124,000. The budget would include funds for the Recorder’s Office to hire a third full-time employee instead of a part-time or shared employee as it most recently had.

Other things that may enter the discussion before the supervisors make final decisions on the budget include the results of bargaining with the county deputies’ association for a new contract, and an increase in the county’s share of funding to support AMR ambulance service in the county that could increase from the $100,000 the county and Charles City each paid this year, to $200,000 or more each in the next contract that would begin with the new fiscal year.

The county levy is only part – usually far less than half – of the total property tax bill that property owners receive each year. Other property taxes are collected by cities for people who live in incorporated areas, by school districts, and lesser amounts for community colleges, assessor, ag extension and some others.