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Dear Editor:
I recently posted The Number of the Day on my Non-Mayor page on Facebook. It was 12.5 – the percentage of growth in property tax rates in Carmel since the last municipal elections. Numbers right out of the Hamilton County website reflected that, as well as an 82 percent jump from 2007 to 2019. Rates are rates. No controversy there.
A few hours later, the city council person for my district posted a comment: “I believe your property taxes are lower today than they were in 2006. I looked at Zillow.”
Checking Zillow, I found partial data had been recorded. Only half of the 2017 taxes were listed and none of 2015’s. Zillow ain’t perfect.
Most telling, however, was the irrelevance of the taxes paid to the tax rate charged. As tax assessments increased and decreased, the total tax bills increased and decreased. Assessment down, total bill down; assessment up, total bill up. That’s totally independent of the persistent increases in the rates.
Plain as the nose on your face. The same nose, theoretically, that pried into my personal property taxes in the first place.
I can defend Councilor Bruce Kimball’s spying on the ground that, indeed, ever-increasing tax rates is a gigantic embarrassment to anyone who voted for them. Especially for anyone party to running up a $1.3 billion total outstanding debt as recorded by the Indiana Department of Local Government Finance.
I can defend the councilor’s ignorance of information Zillow didn’t provide. Zillow also reports the mayor’s property taxes went up 6.7 percent since 2014 (2015 is missing, remember?) on his $999,277 house.
I apologize to the mayor for snooping. My councilor made me do it.
Bill Shaffer
Carmel