News

Tax increase brings discussion

By Scott Wagar

01/15/2013

Increasing taxes always puts a community on edge, but with the recent across the board tax increase in Bottineau it has placed its residents in an uproar.

When tax notices came out at the beginning of the year, property owners were shocked to see their taxes go so incredibly high, and without any notices to them.

For local residents, the tax increase has been the talk of the town, for a few property owners, they have either placed their homes up for sale because they cannot afford the taxes or considered selling their property due to the high tax increase.

Mayor Ben Aufforth, along with a number of councilmen, have all received a number of complaints from their constituents about the high taxes. On Jan. 7 at the council’s monthly meeting, Aufforth spoke to the council, those in the public forum and those watching on television about the tax increase.

“This all has to do with a couple of things,” Aufforth said. “First, it has to do with the value of properties and the state requiring that we stay within a percent of sales, which has to be between 90 to 100 percent.

“The city hasn’t done an appraisal since 1992, which is 20 years. So, we haven’t increased our values with appraisals, and with the way houses are being sold, the state looks at us and records that we need to be in that percentile,” Aufforth continued to state. “So, the county went ahead with their across the board increase to get us in compliance. Right now we are at 90.1 percent, just enough to get us there.”

Aufforth added that the best way to conduct property values is through an actuary appraisal, which will take place this summer in Bottineau.

“We have budgeted money for the appraisal and that will be done this summer,” Aufforth said. “Some values might go down and some may go up, but this is the only way to get a true and full value of the property.”

According to the North Dakota State Tax Department and the International Association of Assessing Officers, true and full value, or market value, is a price articulated in the idiom of money that a property would bring for a sale in the open market between a seller and buyer.

The second reason behind Bottineau’s high tax increase is due to the number of mills the city presently has in its’ city budget.

“We knew in July going into the budget that the value of the mills was higher with all the projects that are scheduled and the anticipation of some development,” Aufforth said. “With that, we elected not to reduce our mills. So, we actually gained a little more money over last year, but with the extra projects we had, there was money we had to spend. There was equipment that needed upgrading; there was money from one fund we had to return to another fund; the local fire sirens in town were in poor condition and the appraisal is coming up.

“So, right now we are looking, if things work out, we probably will be sitting pretty well come 2014,” Aufforth said. “And, we may be able to do something with the mills at that time.”

Aufforth concluded by saying that with so many things going on at one time, it was impossible for the city to stop the tax increase.

“This year, where we we’re sitting, we just couldn’t do anything because of the projects we had going,” he said. A whole bunch of things happened at once to us and we didn’t have the appraisal done, which is not the fault of this council. If we had that done this would have been over and done a year ago.

“So, it is unfortunate that this happened, but it is what it is,” Aufforth added. “The state has required we be there, so we have to be there.”

Aufforth also stated that once the appraisal is completed this summer, the information will be placed in a computer program already in the city’s auditor’s computer which will automatically take care of how property taxes will be evaluated and calculated out to homeowners.

For now, it appears local residents have no choice but to pay the taxes they have been billed.