AZ Taxpayers: Maricopa County property taxes--rates vs. levies

In response to some constituent emails, the District 3 Supervisor’s office has been telling our activists, “We have no intention of raising property taxes. In fact, we intend to decrease.”

The officer is mistaken. Maricopa County does plan to decrease its property tax rate this year, from 1.1046 to 1.0327. But the County plans to increase its levy—the actual number of dollars taken from taxpayers. As we have all seen for the past several years, our rates have gone down, but we are still paying more and more in property taxes.

The details are available here, on page 110 and page 123:

http://www.maricopa.gov/Budget/pdf/TENT2008-09.pdf

Also, to correct an error in my first email: The County is planning to adopt a primary property tax levy of $463.5 million. That is an increase of $33.5 million, or 7.8 percent, over last year’s approved levy of $430 million. (In my first email, I wrote that last year’s approved levy was $454 million—that is the limit imposed by TNT.).

Of that $33.5 million, $9 million exceeds the limit imposed by Truth-in-Taxation (TNT) legislation. Hence today’s TNT hearing. We hope to post details soon at www.aztaxpayers.org, explaining how the Board’s roll-call vote went.

The meeting is already underway, but if you haven’t already, please take a moment to send an email to your Supervisor. The emails for the Maricopa County Supervisors can be found here: http://www.maricopa.gov/BOS/Default.aspx

You can find your district here:

http://recorder.maricopa.gov/pollingplace05/GetDistrict.aspx

Thank you so much for helping to control the growth of taxes and spending in Maricopa County!

Tom Jenney
Arizona Director,
Americans for Prosperity
www.aztaxpayers.org
tjenney@afphq.org
(602) 478-0146