Assessor Mails out Sticker Shock Assessments

You should have received your new and improved property valuation done by the County Assessor.  The new valuations are up about 40-70% in my Guardian informal poll.  The question everyone needs to ask before they scream foul is: Would you sell your property for the value assigned for tax purposes. 

If you find the value too low, then keep quiet and hope for the best again next year.  If you feel the value is too high, then file a protest with the Assessor.  The process is pretty straight forward once your file your protest.  An appraiser from the Assessor's office will contact you and try to discuss how they arrived at the value.  You, for your part need to come up with documentation that the appraisal is not correct with comparable values on like property.  If the value is out of line, generally the appraiser will lower the value.  If you have nothing to support your claim then the value stands.

City and County budgets can rise by 3% each year and they can go back and claim foregone increases for a specified number of years spelled out in the Idaho Code.  They also get all the new construction tax base and that does not figure into the magic 3% increases. 

The time limit for protesting property tax assessed values is the fourth Monday in June.  This is the 23rd for the exact date this year.

Don' forget about how urban renewal is impacting your property taxes.. between Nampa and Caldwell that is a number in excess of $10 million that has to be made up with higher taxes for everyone outside the UR District boundaries.

VOTE ON TUESDAY! MAY 20TH

JUST A REMINDER TO ALL GUARDIAN READERS.....

Tom Dale and Pinnochio

THE GUARDIAN would like to present some fact checking in what former Mayor Tom Dale presented at the candidate forum covered in the local paper today.  Mayor Dale represented $38 million spent on the Nampa Police building and the Library now under construction as projects Nampa Urban Renewal (NDC) was done with the approval of the people of Nampa. 

The records says otherwise when you consider not a single person spoke in favor of another urban renewal agency in Nampa after the foul taste in everyone's mouth over the Idaho Center disaster.  (Citizens voted to take that agency down.)  What they did not realize is, URA money kept flowing to a "secret account" and it kept the red ink to a minimum at the Idaho Center.

Mayor Dale and his rubber stamp city council (except for Mr. Kren) went through the motions of a public hearing and after the 15 day waiting period City Council members of Nampa approved the current Urban Renewal Agency ( NDC ).  Again, not a single person spoke in favor of financing the police building nor the library with out a vote of the people. 

Tom Dale and his hand picked NDC Board members went full speed ahead without a vote of the

people on these projects.  Once board member openly stated if they had put those projects up for a vote the people of Nampa would never have approved them. 

Nampa citizens gave their approval in a bond election for the GO Bond election and even the naysayers on urban renewal helped to get $38 MM in general obligation bods approved with the full faith and credit of the people of Nampa.  Urban Renewal  did not seek the approval of Nampa citizens and Mayor Dale saying the people of Nampa came together and agreed on the police and library projects is a pure untruth when the facts of the situation are researched.

Mayor Dale and his rubber stamp city council went back and captured foregone property taxes and hit Nampa property owners with a whopping 5% increase in the middle of a recession several years ago.  His memory of this seems to have faded and THE GUARDIAN is pleased to remind him of this event.  His attitude was a gimme the money and I don't care how much the Great Recession hit folks in Nampa.  He kept the wheels of Nampa city government will oiled while taxpayers had to come up with more cash. ( City and County budgets are allowed by law to increase at a rate of 3% each year on top of all the new growth taxation going to the city and URA budgets.)

Mayor Dale does not deserve to represent the people of Canyon County as a Commissioner as he does not listen to those he gleefully sticks with paying the bills for projects that would never pass muster with voters.