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News
New construction boosts Kendall County tax base : News : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, IllinoisNew construction boosts Kendall County tax base
| But county board member warns of 'serious hit' due to economic downturn
| by Matt Schury
| 10/9/2008
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Kendall County Supervisor of Assessments Dave Thompson says by his preliminary estimates new construction has increased the county's tax base over $195 million this year.
Thompson said that this is higher than he had estimated, but lower than last year.
"I think that is going to be fairly solid but conceivably we could push $200 million, too," Thompson said.
Last year, the new construction was about $250 million and $270 at the height of the growth, according to Thompson.
Thompson will send out assessment change notices to county property owners next month.
At a recent county budget hearing, board member Pam Parr said she is concerned about next year.
"One of the things that has saved our butts is new construction," Parr said. "If credit has dried up, and I think it has, I think we are going to take a serious hit-underline serious hit-in new construction next year," Parr said.
Board member Bob Davidson agreed that the county will be entering the full slowdown of growth next year.
"I think we are going to look at assessed valuations starting to fall the other way because this is going to the second year we are going into a downturn on property," Davidson said.
Thompson said the county's full assessed value is $3.47 billion. He added that he is expecting that number to rise a little after they finish looking at all the numbers and making adjustments.
"In 10 years, we've probably picked up $2 billion in new construction easily," Thompson said. "That number is everything."
Based on last year's assessment study, Thompson said the county's three-year level of assessment was 31.42 percent of market value and homes need to be assessed at 33.3 percent of the home's value according to state law. He said that the market is still out pacing assessments.
"All things equal, we would have to go up six percent based upon sales ratio studies," Thompson said. "That's the difficult part, that we have to overcome to say 'yeah the market is down,' we wouldn't argue that, but the assessments are even lower than what the market has dropped."
Thompson said that he expects the growth to eventually come back.
"It's not going to be tomorrow or early next year, maybe it will be 18 months down the road," Thompson said. "If you are going to invest in the county you have to invest long term."
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