and the taxpayers suffer for it. I suppose I could have titled this entry with “Business as usual in Marion County”, however there is some good news. Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) has ordered that Marion County reassess the property tax bills being charged for 2007; he also said that homeowners will only have to pay what they previously paid in 2006 until the reassessment is complete.
This comes as somewhat of a mixed blessing to Marion County property owners, because some people actually did see their bills go down this year. The question is open as to whether they’d have to pay the higher 2006 amount or the lower 2007 amount. Additionally, as much as I like Daniels’ stopgap measure, there are two issues that it doesn’t address: 1) That a lot of homeowners in the area pay their property taxes through their mortgage, and 2) that freezing the tax payments doesn’t address the underlying issue of general incompetence that various township assessors displayed.
A brief perusal of the records/articles available indicates that the real reason that the average property taxes increased for Marion County homeowners is quite simply because the assessors did a lousy job.
About 72 percent of commercial and industrial parcels, 90 percent of commercial vacant land and 78 percent of industrial vacant land had no change in assessed value from 2005 to 2006, the state survey found.
If you’re at all familiar with Marion County’s “plan for the future”, this is pretty much right in line with the overall goal – keep/attract business to the County, and drive up property values in certain areas to attract more desirable development.
A lot of people don’t think that the tax freeze is going to help them in the long run. They’re right, because as I said, it doesn’t address the underlying issue in all of this. That issue being that your elected representatives are not watching out for your best interests. You want a better tax bill in 2008 and going forward? Vote Bart Peterson and his cronies out of office.
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