“When they don’t file for it, I don’t give,” village assessor Kevin Irwin said at the village board meeting Monday March 11. But when they do? Well, that might be different—pending the statutes.
“They made a tax exempt request,” Irwin said of Park Village Apartments March 11. Due to one of the land parcels included wasn’t exempt or available for exemption, it had been denied.
Later appealing the denial and going through the trouble to notice things with the village clerk, Park Village had fared better as to the building itself, with the end that the property should have been tax exempt for 2023.
Split into two parcels, one with building and another a vacant lot, Park Village Apartments had qualified for a tax exemption as a non-profit, being county owned.
A de facto refund thus approved, the village would pay half and the state reimburse this, the village assessor paying the second half. And there was more.
“The board of review will probably happen after equalized values are out,” Irwin said, with no firm date as to when this would be. With 80 to 150 percent increases on some properties, the relatively low number of transfers being used to guide revaluation of the whole was helping to drive up tax assessments and with it the tax roll.
“The Department of Revenue said they would prefer if revaluation be done every other year,” village president Bob Geist said, with Irwin saying it was better to wait, due to number of property transfers. If 10 properties sold in a year and 250 needed to be revalued, those 10 properties would form the basis for the revaluation of the whole 250.
Shared by Geist at the February meeting and affirmed by Irwin in March, equalized property values had to be within 90 to 110 percent of other municipalities, with each area given four years to be out of sync and two years to get back in.
As for the future of revaluation, Irwin predicted the townships would be next, though with fewer transfers to work from for the process. A general reset was coming, not entirely without potential good news.
“In essence the mill rate will go down quite a bit,” Irwin predicted of post revaluation reality. The mill rate is a measure of tax per $1,000 in property value, the term derived from “mille” for “thousand.” The rate as a percentage applies to the village as a whole, with individual resident’s tax bills still dependent on their respective property values.
In other village news, meanwhile, streets and utilities head Bob LaMarche reported that the sewer plant repairs had come in at $7,000 with labor after an initial projected cost of $15,000, and that Frank was willing to come back and work at the park. Gravel was needed on Ingersoll Street, while the plant was still dealing with a sand problem.
“It’s getting into the storage tanks, and we just don’t need it there,” LaMarche said.
