Archive for the ‘Appraisals’ Category
The Budget Beast-Reform Or Put It On A Diet
Monday, April 29th, 2013April 29, 2013
I heard City Councilman Jim Strickland recently talking about the upcoming budget hearings. He is chairman of the budget committee. He has a tough job as it is difficult to get seven votes to pass any significant cuts.
His suggestion seems to be to put the budget beast on a diet. In other words, the County Assessor has predicted that the new property tax assessments will be down 4-1/2%. Jim wants to let the pot of property tax money fall by this amount which would mean a reduction of about 3-1/4%. The Mayor, on the other hand, wants to increase property taxes rates by 28 cents or 9%. Faced with those (more…)
We Tote The Note
Tuesday, September 4th, 2012September 4, 2012
For years as I drove home from work, I passed a used car lot on Lamar that had a sign that said “We Tote The Note”.
Recently I asked the City and the County for information on property taxes for the fiscal year 2011 to see who totes the note locally. I wanted to know how much is paid by residential versus commercial, industrial, farm, exempt, multi and personalty.
How Much Do Residential Taxpayers Pay Versus All Others?
Thursday, August 16th, 2012August 16, 2012
As I was looking at my City property tax bill due at the end of August, I ask myself the question “What is residential property tax total as a percentage of the total property tax?”.
You would think that this is a question that could be easily found online. So I went to the City of Memphis, Shelby County and the Shelby County Trustee for the answer. As of right now only the Trustee answered and I thank him and his staff for the outstanding job that they do and their (more…)
Investigation of PILOTS
Thursday, June 21st, 2012June 21, 2012
I have been investigating past PILOTS (the payment in lieu of tax program) and trying to follow up on past ending dates to see if when the PILOT ended, did the City and the County get the promised higher taxes. This has proved to be very difficult to gather this information and it should be the subject of a public report run hopefully by the County Trustee’s office. But I will give it a shot. I (more…)