April 5 - Town of Falmouth

Tinkham Reporting
(508) 759-9162
1-
105
MR. WHRITENOUR: The increases that we discussed this
evening are not as a result of any increases in the property values. Let’s
talk about property values for a second, though. With even such a high
levy of property taxes, the property tax rate in this community is only $6.75
per thousand. Now, what that shows is that we have extremely strong
property values, simply put. The increases in the property tax revenues, I
think that largely a lot of it is from the excluded debt that we’ve taken on;
otherwise it would be growing just as steady but maybe a little bit slower.
And I would say that the second part of your question dealt with how much
of the increase in our property tax revenues comes from the new building.
And what we’ve seen is – and, again, it’s one of those fundamental
economic considerations that we need to adapt to -- that the issue is we
had maybe in its heyday – which was in the 2006-2007 – and I’m only
going back for the last ten years – they call that the new growth, which is
the new property tax revenue each year from those properties that were
built during that year. We derived approximately 1.2, 1.3 million dollars per
year at the height of that. Now we’ve dropped to 500,000 or below. It’s
about a third of what it once was. And so we’ve proven that you will not
fund the growth in Town services on the new buildings in town. And that’s
part of our new paradigm, that we’re not counting on this new development
to increase the property taxes; that we’re going to have to take a look, if it’s
property taxes you desire, you’re going to have to take a look at the