Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Consolidation Fall out and market value trending

The City Council and the Allen County Commissioners have discovered what the taxpayers were already cognitive about when it came to total consolidation. The need to study the impact of consolidation on the whole community. The group meeting came out with a decision to form another yellow ribbon committee outside the law governing consolidation. The cautionary yellow ribbon committee does not need the public hearings as it discusses merging certain departments.

More than likely, the latest action by the city council is to quiet the public as it attempts to do what the law forbids without the public input. Remember, the two authors of the proposal were Republcans, Dr. John Crawford and Sam Talarico. Talarico is not seeking reelection, which may explain why City Council and its' members are moving this merger without the public permission.

Here is a suggested reading, by the Indiana Policy Review Foundation on Marion County consolidation, that was forwarded the to me, after blogging about consolidation.
The Indiana Policy Review Foundation,in turn, conducted research on the effects of consolidation on the efficiency and effectiveness of providing local public services. It had a different task and focus. The commission asked the foundation to summarize what experts thought about local government consolidation.


From Sam Staley's finding, I find limited consolidation as the best fit for communities like Fort Wayne which is so fragmented. Fragmented in the different constituents needs and interest. Below are some of the issues in limited consolidation.

Focusing on police departments, the biggest obstacle is overcoming attitudes.
Attitudes surrounding pay inequity, choice of jobs, wealth building, and union muscle during negotiation.

Economy development departments, decision makers who are more in favor of growth in hopes of influencing new money into the city as well as in anticipation of new ideas bubbling up from the newly formed government. The cost laid at the foots of those in the outlaying communities.

The biggest interest for me is the diluting of the African-American representation. And the second reason is the cost of merged operations that would involve more specialized skills, from the cost of a more professional staff for governing the merged departments would fall more heavily on the the taxing of African-Americans living in the under developed and depressed areas.


In order to shush the more affluence tax base, a lower tax rate will be used to reduce the ticket shock of the merger. While the tax rate will be increased to subsides the lower rate given to the outlying areas.

This increasing in property tax has been cushioned with the replacement tax, but the
Governor is talking about doing away with it. The fact that many assessing units are uniformity assessing property, trending to increase property tax is on the horizon.

The township assessors wants the county to hire a private company, GNA, to assess property next year utilizing a new system called "trending." Instead of going out and assessing property like the assessors should have, they will attempt to match similar properties. Trending is what caused the over assessment of property in the
City of Fort Wayne, because homes were estimated rather than actual assessed. Houses were priced at amount that similar houses in other neighborhoods. But because neighborhoods is a factor on the selling price of a piece of property, this was an unfair comparable assessment. This is a time saving as well as it compensate for those who are not trained in assessing properties.

State officials mandated counties adopt market trending this year in an attempt to make anticipate the cost of increases in property taxes. This way, the officials can determine how they will skew the increase in favor of the more affluence taxpayers.

This does not benefit the tax payers in the city if the assessed values were what properties would be sold for rather than what the property would actual be sold for.

Furthermore, in the news media, comments have focused on the need for a Property Tax Board. When in fact, the taxpayer should pay more attention to the one lone representative in their district who goes to Indianapolis and draft laws that are not in their district interest. The tax board that is proposed is to reduce the tax rate. Where as the time to protest inaccurate property tax bills remains on the tax payers. And the legislators have reduced the time to protest tax bill.

Under SEA 362 reduces the length of time taxpayers have to protest a tax bill and file a suit in tax court. To protest a tax bill, taxpayers will have 45 days. Previously, taxpayers had 60 days. In addition, taxpayers will have 60 days to file a suit in tax court, a change from the previous 180 days.

The shortening of the time will prevent folks from protesting on mistakes made by the auditors and treasurer office.

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