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City Council plans to take full advantage of the leeway the state allows for municipalities to increase their property tax revenue after a general county reassessment.
That maximum is 10 percent, as applied to the municipality's total projected property tax revenue, compared to its revenue for the previous year.
Reassessment has scrambled the tax bases for individual properties, so the increase won't necessarily translate to comparable increases for individual property owners.
Further complicating comparisons for individual property owners is the city's reversion for next year to the traditional style of property taxation, based on the total assessed value of properties.
For the past decade or so, the city has based its property tax on the assessed value of land only -- with no tax applied to the value of buildings.
For this year, the city collected $9.6 million in property tax, according to City Manager Marla Marcinko, speaking at a council meeting Wednesday.
For 2017, it proposes to collect 10 percent more -- an added $908,000, Marcinko said.
It will need to apply a levy of 5.31 mills to obtain that additional amount, based on its analysis of the new total assessed value of property in the city, according to Marcinko.
That total assessed value hasn't yet been set by the county, but city officials have made an estimate based on initial figures the county provided in June, and subsequent reductions, pending reductions and potential reductions based on appeals, according to Marcinko and solicitor Larry Clapper.
If the city adopts the proposed ordinances next month, the owner of a property with a total assessed value of $100,000 would pay $531.
Under the old setup, that same homeowner might have paid little less.
That guesstimate is based on the assessed value of land being typically about one-seventh the total assessed value under the county's old system and those old assessed values being on average about one-tenth as much as the new ones.
Thus, 1/10.5 of the new $100,000 assessed value of the hypothetical property is $9,523 -- which represents the old assessed value of the hypothetical property.
Further, one-seventh of that old assessed value of $9,523 is $1,400 -- which represents the assessed value of the land on that hypothetical property.
Based on the millage of 394 that applied for the city's land-value tax, that translates to a property tax bill under the old system of about $525.
In going for the maximum permissible tax hike, and in taking into account appeal reductions in the tax base, the city is following the recommendations of its Act 47 distressed-municipality recovery team, Marcinko said.
That demonstration of fiscal responsibility could help the city obtain permission from the state to exit the Act 47 program at the end of next year, she said.
Wednesday's proposed ordinances call for keeping earned income tax the same for 2017.
EIT for residents who work in the city is 1.2 percent.
EIT for people who live outside Altoona but work in the city is 1.1 percent.
EIT for pensions, applicable to both residents and non-residents, is 0.4 percent.
Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 949-7038.