The Everett City Council met in special session Monday night to adopt a new tax rate and set the differential between the residential and commercial property tax rates and as a result property owners are facing a good news bad news scenario.
On the one hand, the Council voted to adopt a lower tax rate, but on the hand, residential property values have grown so dramatically in the past year that taxes will still go up slightly over last year for many home owners.
For commercial, industrial and personal property (CIP) tax payers the news is better, as an decreased tax rate for CIP property owners and slower growth in commercial property values will be result in a lower average tax bill in 2015.
According to information provided by Auditor Richard Viscay, Everett’s single family property value rose by nearly $20,000 over last year’s values. The increase represents a nearly 8.5 percent increase in single property values. That along with the city’s decision to continue to shift more of the tax burden onto commercial tax payers and utilize excess parking receipts to offset the tax levy by $650,000 (see related story this page) will result in a tax rate decrease of $.43 per thousand dollar of valuation in the city’s residential tax rate for 2015, from $15.04 per thousand in 2014 to $14.61 per thousand for 2015.
However, when the new lower tax rate is applied to the new higher average single family property value of $259,275, the result is an average single family property tax rate of $3,788, or about $183 more than last year.
On the commercial property side, the average property values also went up about $20,000 over the previous year, but on a percentage basis that represents only about 2-percent growth in value over last year.
The new CIP tax rate for 2015 will be $39.45 per thousand of valuation, which is $1.50 decrease in the tax rate over 2014’s $40.95 per thousand. The result will be a decrease of about $618 in the average commercial property tax bill.