State changes would raise county taxes on homes, cut them on farms

Linn County supervisors and department heads may have just enough room to write a hold-the-line county budget for next year - but that doesn't mean your property taxes wouldn't go up.

The state assessment limitation, or "rollback," announced Monday will increase 4.4 percent for residential property, but drop 16 percent for agricultural property, for the fiscal year starting next July 1. That means matching increases for homes and cuts for farm property if supervisors write  a budget to raise the same amount of revenue as this year's $128.9 million.

"You just can't manipulate it so everybody stays the same under the current formula" in state law, Budget Director Dawn Jindrich told supervisors.

Dropping the levy to keep residential taxes flat would mean an even greater cut for farm property, Jindrich said. But the rollbacks should allow supervisors to write a flat budget.

"It's actually doable, if you want to," she said.

The rollback changes mean the levy for mental health and developmentally disabled (MHDD) services, already facing a $5.3 million shortfall this year, will raise even less next year.

Keeping the current countywide levy rate of $6.12 per $1,0000 assessed value would generate up to $2 million more than this year's $57.2 million in property tax revenue, Jindrich said. Raises to union employees and servicing the $7.5 million bond issue for an upgraded public-service radio system would eat up about $500,000 of that.

The commercial property assessment limitation remains at 100 percent.

Tuesday's brief discussion was the first time supervisors have talked about next year's budget. The budget-writing process starts this fall and should be done by March.

"Overall, I really think it's not a bad picture," Jindrich said. "It's a shift from ag to residential, but we can't do anything about that."