Councilman Joel Fritzler had a letter in the Southern earlier this week advocating for an increase in the C'dale sales tax to help balance the city's finances, as opposed to the proposed increase in the property tax that's floating around. In the letter he noted a link to a spreadsheet the state has posted comparing property taxes of various areas around the state. I took at look athe the spreadsheet and here are several of the aggregated property tax rates for communitities in our region:
Carbondale: 8.44
Harrisburg 9.6.33
Marion 6.699
Metropolis 7.4
Mt. Vernon 7.88
Murphysboro 9.169
Effingham 6.959
Charleston 8.89
Chester 7.24
While Carbondale is certainly not the highest in the area, property taxes here are significantly higher than Marion and it's probably not a good idea to raise them much higher if Carbondale want to remain competitive with Marion, given Marion's proximity to the interstate and relatively lax attitude towards zoning.
Clarification: As Brain rightly points out in the comments, Carbondale has no property tax imposed by the city. These figures are aggregated property taxes imposed by various taxing districts existing within the city. Also, the figures are at least three years old so very well may have fluctuated since then.
Those are sales tax rates, not property tax rates. Carbondale has no property tax assessment.
ReplyDelete...also, Carbondale's sales tax rate is 7.75%. Not 8.44%. I do like having no assessment for property tax, but I wonder how much new single family housing has been built as a result on no tax, which I believe was part of the reason to lose the tax. Multi-unit building has boomed though, so maybe it has equaled out. Seeing what a financial mess we are in, maybe a combination of the two would be a better solution.
ReplyDeleteOops! Those are property tax rates. Sorry, I was confused. Though, according to my tax bill, the rate was 8.05 this year. It varies from year to year. Imagine how much lower the rate would be if we only had one school district as an assessment rather than two. One less administration would save quite a bit of money. And mosquito abatement? I haven't seen or smelled them in my alley in FIVE years!
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