Where's the Money Going?

Kathleen Kreller has an article in Sunday's Statesman about property tax valuations. The thrust of article is about how property gets valued by the Assessor, and whether you can do anything about it. Which is fine as far as it goes, but I think it's kind of missing the real story.

The real story is, where's all that money going? If the market value jumps up the tax assessment, then more money is flowing to the taxing entity. The schools get so many mils, the cemetery, the police, the library, the mosquito district, etcetera, all get a tiny slice of each property tax dollar. Let's say $10 for every $100,000 of assessed value. So, if my assessed value goes up 50%, as it has in many areas, taxes go from $10 to $15, assuming the mils stay the same.

I live in Kuna, so let's assume the tax base for the Kuna library went overall by 20%, so if the mils stay the same, the library gets 20% more money. This makes me wonder if the library experienced a 20% increase in expenses, or whether it just gets more money to spend. Does a mosquito district have higher expenses when more people live in the area?

I've seen the argument that our growth, which fuels the rising property values, is causing government increased expense. Example; Kuna is trying to expand its sewage treatment ability so more folks can move here. Well, why do existing residents have to pay for growth? Can't the developers, who all seem to make pretty good money, pay for it and pass it along to the people moving in?

Such projects are probably too big and complicated to make developers pay for, I guess. But, after the land is developed, and the new residents are paying the same property taxes, isn't the government still collecting more money per capita than before? Say we have a given level of service per capita, maybe 1 police officer for every 100 residents. Then growth occurs and property values shoot up, and we hire more cops. Well if the ratio is still 1 to 100, that should be affordable based on the pre-growth formula. There will be more cops, but more people paying for them. If you also add a 20% property value increase, government still gets its 20% increase.

Have the mills been adjusted down? If not, where's the extra money going? Are budgets increasing relative to population, or in excess of it? I am not a property tax expert, just a property tax payer, so I may be missing something, but these are the issues I'd like to see Ms. investigate and write about.