Businesses are going under left and right and people are having trouble making ends meet. How does the city of Keene respond? Raise taxes! The Keene Sentinel reports:
Keene’s tax rate is up — but not by as much as it has been in recent years.
The Department of Revenue Administration set Keene’s rate at $30.82 per $1,000 of assessed valuation, a 65-cent, or 2.2 percent, increase from last year’s rate of $30.17.
That means the tax bill on a Keene house assessed at $200,000 would come to $6,164.
The tax rate is broken into four portions — the city portion, the local school portion, the state school portion and the county portion.
This year the rate has increased in all categories except the local school portion, which dropped 23 cents, or 1.7 percent, from $13.55 to $13.32.
“We’re very pleased to see the rate go down,” said John R. Harper, the school district’s business administrator.
This year’s school budget didn’t go up much and there was a surplus from last year, but the real boost came from income — in particular, state building aid for the new middle school and the revenue from the sale of the old middle school, he said.
“There were some good revenue reasons why we needed to raise less from taxes from last year. It’s unusual that we sell a school building, for instance,” Harper said.
The Keene city portion of the rate is up 46 cents, or 4 percent, from $11.32 to $11.78.
That represents a $386,742 increase in the total amount of money that the city raised by taxes — the smallest increase since 2000, according to Martha M. Landry, assistant city manager and finance director.
Retirement payments, health insurance and interest payments on bonds have all increased since last year, but wages are down because the city has allowed positions that have become vacant to go unfilled, she said.
The city’s employee unions also agreed to forgo contractual raises this year.
The county portion of the rate is up 32 cents, from $3.03 to $3.35 — a 10.6 percent increase.
The county raised $1.4 million more from taxes this year than it did last year, according to Sheryl A. Trombly, county finance director.
The county’s expenses have increased because the portion of Medicaid it has to pay for residents in the county-owned nursing home has gone up, along with health insurance costs, while revenue from the nursing home has dropped, she said.
The total share of the county budget that Keene is responsible for has also gone up because of an increase in the total property valuation in the city, Trombly said.
Last year, the increase in the Keene tax rate was $1.37, or 4.8 percent, over the 2009 rate of $28.80. That year’s rate was up 5.1 percent, with a $1.40 increase, from the 2008 rate of $27.40.
Tax bills were mailed to Keene residents on Oct. 28, and payment is due Dec. 1.
For each $30.82 Keene taxpayers pay this year:
u $11.78 goes to the city of Keene.
u $13.32 goes to the Keene School District.
u $2.37 goes to state education taxes.
u $3.35 goes to Cheshire County.
