[Vision2020] Property Taxes

[Kenneth Marcy]

My, oh my, flexible governmental accounting theory presents itself in 
the form of capitalizing future salary increases into a virtual "trust 
fund" for officers' benefits.  That should give future budgeting efforts 
a pretzel twist.  Will government financial statements disclose the 
capitalized future salary expenditures versus the actual expenditures 
via "usual" appropriation and expenditure processes?

Does this creative accounting have other uses?  For example, might the 
University of Idaho purchase a generously-sized chunk of US National 
Forest for research purposes, agreeing a premium price for the 
acquisition, then put the difference between the actual purchase price 
of the land and the funding resources for it into a long-term trust fund 
for university faculty pay raises?  Such a plan would put a new twist to 
the idea of the forests helping out the schools, but hey, as the wit 
once quipped, some things, such as surgery, sausage making, and public 
finance should not be examined too closely.


Ken


On 7/10/19 9:39 AM, Ron Force wrote:
> It's not clear from the Daily News article, but the total increase on 
> a $200,000 home would be $110:
> /The increase would raise taxes on property owners from $4.49 per 
> $1,000 of assessed property value to $5.63, an increase of about 25 
> percent. For homeowners in Moscow, who receive a state tax exemption 
> for 50 percent of their property’s value up to $100,000, this means 
> they would pay about $560 annually on a home valued at $200,000 — up 
> from about $450 last year. /
>
> But part of the increase would come from foregone tax increases, and 
> would be used for police raises:
> /Moscow rarely accepts annual tax increases and so has the “foregone” 
> authority to raise taxes by nearly $325,000 a year. It has elected to 
> recapture $200,000 of that. Riedner said this will provide a stable 
> fund to support raises planned for Moscow police officers. /
> /
> /
> Ron Force
> Moscow Idaho USA
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 10, 2019 at 7:58 AM rhayes at frontier.com 
> <mailto:rhayes at frontier.com> <rhayes at frontier.com 
> <mailto:rhayes at frontier.com>> wrote:
>
>     Daily News yesterday reported that property taxes will go up 25%
>     next year mainly due to the police station bond. I do not think
>     that is what the city said was going to happen when they were
>     hyping the bond vote. Am I correct in this?
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