September 25, 2025 — Meeting Transcript

Machine-generated transcript — may contain errors.

Good evening, everyone. A public hearing notice has been posted. Adequate notice of it has been given, so I will call us to order. Okay.

So, the 2025 property tax rates need to be set prior to October 1st, which is why we're meeting tonight. Prior to setting property tax rates, a public hearing is required. The purpose of the public hearing is to receive public comments to be considered in the process of setting tax rates. John.

You said everything that's on this first slide. It's perfect. Missouri's property tax system is designed to set property tax rates that adjust as assessed valuations adjust And limit our growth of taxes to something that doesn't exceed consumer price indexes. This is kind of how the formula works.

AV, meaning assessed valuations times rate, equal our tax collections. And when assessed valuations rise, rates are forced to decrease so that tax collections remain approximately level. The same is true in the reverse. If assessed valuations decline, rates rise, again, to keep tax collections approximately equal.

In recent years, we have only really experienced assessed valuations rising, but I can tell you in the 2008-2009 time frame, they actually went down for a couple reassessment periods. In regards to property tax growth, these are the way that it grows. They grow with new construction. It grows with the capture of CPI during reassessment years, and it grows with voter tax rate increases Assessed valuations start with an appraisal by the state I mean by the county assessor Those appraisals don necessarily reflect market value They're usually a little bit lower than market value.

And then it's converted to an assessed valuation with these formulas. 19% for residential property, 32 for commercial, and one-third for personal property. This year our assessed valuation is 1.73 billion and it's in these, this pie graph shows the categories of residential, commercial, and personal property. Residential being the largest share.

And the prior year's assessed valuation are shown there and you can see we grew about 200 million over the prior reassessment period. Here's how we've seen growth through time for each category. This is the growth we're seeing from reassessment this year. Reassessment happens in odd numbered years every other year.

So you see it rise typically in the odd numbered years and somewhat fall back in the even numbered years. This particular year has got a lot of growth. We also grow from new construction, and this is a good year for new construction as well, both in residential and commercial. It's pretty strong this year.

We're required to set our tax rates by October 1st. The date we get to make these calculations usually doesn't come out until about September 15th, So we have a very small window of time in which to react and get these rates adopted. These are the rates that we're proposing this year. They are the result of calculations that the state auditor provides us, and they have been reviewed by the state auditor.

So at this point in time, they are fully validated. The operating levies have gone down for residential and commercial due to the growth in reassessment The debt levy stays the same There is a recoupment levy that flows from last year in which we did a recoupment on commercial property And we divided that to flow over two years. We applied it to last year. Recently, I'd say back this summer, the state auditor advised us that they wanted to revise a number in our calculation, and it lowered the commercial recoupment number and actually created a negative recoupment in the residential levy.

So it's actually lowering the residential levy. So you can see these are the proposed rates for this coming year at the bottom line. This is how they compare to last year. The residential rate overall is down 34.5 cents.

The commercial rate is down 20 cents. These are how rates have fallen through time as assessed value rises. The rates fall. The blue line, blue bars being residential continue to fall.

The lowest number on the graph is $2.75. That is actually a floor rate that if we reach that point, the rate will not fall any further. That could happen with the next reassessment or the one following. We're very likely to get to that point.

The debt service levy has been stable for the third year in a row. We lowered it three years ago due to the inflow of funds being greater than what we needed to service the debt. In regards to amounts billed and collected, our collections usually fall a little shy of what's been billed due to protested taxes and the resolution of those protests. So this is the history of that This is how our revenue is growing by source The blue, the green bar being new construction, the blue bar being reassessment and CPI, and personal property does its own thing.

So you can see in 2025 we're seeing strong new construction and strong reassessment numbers. I'd like to remind you about what the tax incentives are. TIF projects currently cost the district around $530,000 and other abatements that come from Chapter 100 and Chapter 353 cost us about $2 million. Eventually, as these abatements reach the end of their life, we'll see some tax growth from that.

We also are carrying some voluntary rollbacks that were applied starting after the 2019 tax rate increase, and I wanted to confirm that those are still in existence. This shows that our voter approved rate ceiling is $4.51. We have an operating rate ceiling. I call the 451 kind of a hard ceiling, and then we have our annual rate ceiling, which is more of a soft ceiling.

And then you can see the rates that we're levying there on the bottom line. These are just operating levies. They do not include the debt service levy. That's the conclusion of my presentation.

We'll be setting the rates during the open meeting as we've presented here in this hearing. Any questions or comments? Are there any public comments? No?

Okay. Okay. Well, thank you. So, Chris, we can move that we adjourn this tax rate hearing.