Many of you have questions about the property taxes due to the large increases. The town is asking questions to the county, Suring Schools and NWTC with varying degrees of success. Here is what we have learned:
The increases are valid, it is not a data entry issue or other clerical problem.
The tax calculation is too complex to discuss in detail here, but I will try to explain it as best as possible.
First some terms:
Estimated Fair Market Value: A guess of what your property will sell for if placed on the market. Its NOT used in tax calculations
Total assessed value: The value of your property and improvements as determined by the town assessor. The value is based on either when built or on inflation since the last evaluation in 2009.
Average Assessment Ratio: The ratio of the assessed value and fair market value. By state law, it must be between 90% and 110% for at least one year in every 5 years. If not, the town must do a re-assessment. (Due to the housing market, ours is ~54%. In 2023, it was 75%, 2022 was 91% and in 2021 98%. We are scheduled for a re-evaluation in 2026 or 2027 based on assessor availability.) The re-eval will involve a site visit by the assessor to look at the exterior of all properties in the town. More details will be forth-coming in 2026 or 2027. The re-eval by itself does NOT raise taxes, it just adjusts the assessed value to be within 10% of the fair market value. In doing this the mil rate will lower so the taxes stay the same. However, see the discussion below on mil rates.
Mil rate: The mill rate is the amount of tax payable per dollar of the assessed value of a property. It is a figure that represents the amount per $1,000 of the assessed value of the property, which is used to calculate the amount of property tax
Net assessed value rate: This is the combined mill rate for the county, municipality, school, and tech school. This number multiplied by your assessed value equals the gross property tax on your tax bill. However, this is not truly your gross property tax, due to the lottery credit and first dollar credit.
Now the fun part
Some property owners had their assessed value on wooded lot reduced by 25% in 2020, following the storm. The value goes up 5% every five years as trees grow. 2025 is when the first 5% goes away and the lowering is only 20%. This will happen again in 2030, 2035 and so forth until the 25% reduction goes to zero. Not all land owners saw this. It was based on land use and degree of damage.
Since lottery credit and first dollar credit went down, taxes went up. Using the tax bills I looked at, if the credits stayed the same as last year, they would have made up for the NWTC tax increase.
Suring schools had a referendum a while back, and we are still paying for that.
As for the county increase (and NWTC and Suring), the taxes are set by that particular entity. The amount each individual pays is determined by the mil rate (actually the assessed value rate). Since the towns assessed value is significantly less than the fair market value (Compared to the other towns in the County), our assessed value rate (at least for the property I checked) was 0.01674. Riverview just had a re-evaluation and their ratio is 0.010611. Mountain who also recently re-evaluated has a 0.00917 ratio). Since their ratios are lower, their taxes are lower. (This doesn’t include the Riverview referendum to raise taxes). Their assessment ratios are also 97% and 100%).
When Doty has their re-evaluation in the future, our ratios will adjust and improvement should be seen in taxes. HOWEVER, since multiple towns pay into the schools, NWTC and County, I cant guarantee that those changes will wipe out the taxes of this year.
Long story short: We have a higher assessed value rate than many other towns, so our taxes are higher.
If you have more questions, please contact the county treasurer, Suring School District or NWTC. If you don’t like taxes, and want them lowered, please consider running for school board or county board. The town of Doty by its self has little to no say in taxes levied by these entities, only the town taxes, which the town strives to keep as low as possible while maintaining the services the residents need.
The county treasurer provided some information:
… in both lottery credit and first dollar credit in most school districts made a noticeable impact on tax bills. The total overall assessed value of Doty decreased slightly from 2023 to 2024, with some of that likely being due to personal property no longer being assessed. Some of the personal property value would have ended up as improvement value on real estate, but some of the personal property classes are just not assessed any more due to the law change effective for 2024. For Doty, the levied amounts for all taxing entities (County, town, Suring School, Wabeno School, and NWTC) increased from 2023 to 2024. This all contributes to increased tax burden on the real estate parcels. There definitely have been more re-evals throughout the county overall in the last few years, which seems to create less predictability of tax bills from year to year. (emphasis added)