Oh man… we got work to do. Not nearly as high as California when we departed because we had no jobs and couldn’t afford to live there anymore. The California model is the best one I can think of for the destection of an American community. You go Mayor Dave!

Is there a list of assessed values in these cities? Just curious.

I gotta believe Meridian is going to pass Nampa soon in population. I’m sort of surprised that Meridian is so far behind Nampa in taxes. Wonder why? The schools in Meridian are much nicer, facility wise. Nampa’s schools, at least the high schools, are pretty marginal. I’m mainly talking about athletic facilities/fan comfort and outside appearances, because that is why I go to so many area high schools.

EDITOR NOTE–Schools are not funded by city taxes. Harriman lives in Nampa and the thrust of the article was originally about the spending in Nampa being nearly as high as Boise.

Note to Rod:
Property levy rates in Canyon County are 40% higher overall than the levy rates in Ada. The main driver of this is Urban Renewal agencies in Caldwell and Nampa.

Nancolas and Dale are bleeding citizens dry and really don’t care to hear it. Why they haven’t figured out employers locate in Ada v. Canyon County. It’s the price of property taxation. The difference is a big consideration for employers.

Rod, Just pointing out that all that is not Boise City is not necessarily Ada County. The levy rate for Ada County is less than that for the City. The 3X Boise City you cite must include non-County and non-City entities.. schools, ACHD, etc. That being said, property tax for many services is an archaic way to tax people. It has little to do with ability to pay, and little to do with cost of services provided. Further, duplication among City and County entities costs us extra too.

Wait, it used to be that people moved to Canyon County (and suffered the commute to Boise) because homes were cheaper and property taxes were less.

My point was that the City of Boise is about 25% of my property tax bill. The rest goes to other stuff.

It would be interesting to see if the tax amounts listed are just those restricted to residential properties — as the “per household” and”per capita” implies — or if they are (as I suspect) for all land use types.

The American Farmland Trust publishes analyses, called Costs of Community Service Studies, that break all property-based tax revenue streams down by land use types (residential, commercial, industrial, farm, and wild lands) and compare them to the costs of providing services to the various land uses. Canyon County has had these studies conducted twice in the past few years and the results are typical for most U.S. cities. Residential land almost always costs a city much more in services rendered than in tax receipts — leaving a city to balance the books by increasing its industrial and commercial properties (which generate much more in revenue than in service costs — even with the same levy rates).

I suspect Nampa and Caldwell must have higher comparative levy rates because they don’t have as much much commercial or industrial land as Boise or Meridian. Whereas Kuna’s relatively low rate is due to its fairly new infrastructure (not needing much maintenance, as of yet) and the amount of farmland within its city limits; which also typically generates more taxes than demands on services (why the AFT conducts these studies in the first place).

I suspect Kuna will have to significantly increase either its commercial/industrial acreage as it builds more housing (which comes at the cost of significant farmland loss, accelerating its budget imbalance), or it will face even more financial hardship.

It isn’t as simple as looking at a community’s levy rate to determine whether a mayor and council are doing a good job with the municipality’s budget. Both Nampa and Caldwell have spent a significant amount of their recent history (much longer than just two mayors’ tenure) perfectly content to be the bedroom communities to the Boise area. Their overabundance of residential land (compared to commercial and industrial land) is directly related to their higher levy rates — add the amount of public funds expended on widening the interstate between Boise and Canyon County to continue to bolster the false economy of “drive to qualify” mortgage lending, and the equation is even more imbalanced than these higher levy rates would indicate.

The only way Nampa and Caldwell will stand a chance at any long-term balance is to both increase their amount of commercial and industrial lands and lower their levy rates. The lower rates will also spur private sector business generation and open up local employment opportunities (lessening the amount of interstate driving and lowering each household’s transportation costs).