Benton County supervisors outline why taxes can rise even as county levy falls
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Summary
Supervisors explained that rising assessed values and state assessment rules, not just the county levy, drive taxpayers’ bills; they described how rollback rules, homestead exemptions and state transfers of responsibilities affect local budgets and set a public hearing on published levies.
Chair opened the session by saying the board could only set the county portion of the consolidated tax rate while noting that about 30% of a typical property tax bill goes to schools and other jurisdictions. "So we can only specifically talk about the counties tonight," the Chair said.
Larry, the county assessor, explained how the mailed estimates work and urged residents to use the Department of Management links included with assessment notices to plug in their assessed values. "If you know your assessment... you can plug in your levy rates and kind of play with it," Larry said, describing the standard comparison of last year s $100,000 assessed value to this year s $110,000.
Officials stressed that an individual—ounty levy can fall while overall taxes rise because the taxable base increased. "We're lowering our levy, but it's still showing that it's increasing because our tax base increased," the Chair said. Larry added that residential and commercial parcels are assessed from recent sales, while agricultural land uses a five-year productivity formula.
Board members described the assessment "rollback" system that limits statewide allowable growth and said a Senate proposal under consideration to eliminate the rollback (moving assessments toward 100% of market) would shift much of the tax burden to homeowners. Participants noted the scale of potential change: moving residential assessments from 44% to 100% of market value would be a large increase for homeowners, while agricultural and commercial shifts would have different proportional effects.
Officials also discussed homestead exemptions and reimbursements. The Chair said the county no longer receives some reimbursements (including military homestead funding) and listed other county responsibilities that remain local costs, such as court space and storage for the clerk's office.
On contingency and reserves, the board emphasized the need for unreserved fund balances to bridge the gap between July 1 and the September tax collections and recounted recent borrowing and partial repayment using ARPA for the 9-1-1 towers and paging system. The board voted to proceed with the published levies and to hold a public hearing as required.
