Letter from the President
Hello residents,
A few big notes for our November newsletter:
- VOTE. 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Zionsville Town Hall, Whitestown Municipal Building, Boone County Courthouse, or Hussey-Mayfield Memorial Public Library. Our community is small, our districts are smaller. EVERY VOTE TRULY COUNTS.
- November 28 we’ll hear about the Gateway from Corrie Sharp, and we’ll have our annual election. We announced the slate last month.
- Our annual Progressive Dinner is Dec 9! We’re in search of homeowners south of Oak Street who are willing to host the appetizer or dessert portion of the evening. It’s an easy gig, and a lot of fun! Contact eeffner@gmail.com
Leaf collection continues until approximately Dec 1 (weather permitting). Rack leaves into long narrow piles along the curb so the street department can vacuum leaves. Park cars off the street if possible.
Heather
From Town Councilor Josh Garrett
The 2024 budget process is complete (yea!). It was unanimously approved at our October 2nd Council meeting, and I am pleased with the result. While it has a small budget deficit, it pauses much of the growth in our spending while retaining core services and gives us a year to have some trailing revenues catch up with expenses.
Government revenues, especially from property taxes, can be complicated. Zionsville has one of the lowest tax rates in Central Indiana. It may not seem that way as you look at your tax bill, but those increases in property taxes are driven by fast increases in property values and not the Town increasing our revenues at those same rates. The good news for homeowners is that many homes in Zionsville, especially in the Village, continue to grow in value. The bad news is that property tax bills rise in conjunction with those increases.
The State caps how much the Town can increase our total assessed value in the Town by 4%, but that is across the entire area and not individual homes. The impact of growing valuations across the entire community is that the tax rate falls even as the bill goes up. Confusing, right?
For easy math, let’s say your home is worth $100,000 and that our tax rate in 2023 is 1% while the value of all property in Zionsville is $1 Billion. This would put your tax bill at $1,000. Let’s say the value of your home doubled in 2024 to $200,000 while the total value of all property in Zionsville went up 40% to $1.4 Billion. The tax rate would now be .74% (down 26%), but that rate would be multiplied by your new home rate of $200,000, which means your tax bill would be $1,485.71 ($200,000 X .74%). While you’re seeing a 49% increase in your tax bill, it is being driven by the increase in the value of your home and not an increase of taxes by the Town. While we do see some uplift, that is capped by 4% overall.
This gets further complicated by multiple taxing authorities such as the library, voter approved referendums for the school and others which impact the overall rate. We are also are capped by the 1% constitutional limit for single family ownership of homes (voter approved referendums can exceed that number).
I realize that’s a lot of math for a casual newsletter, but the decision we make on spending, new development (commercial is capped at 2% or 3% depending on the project), and approval of other spending authorities can have a material impact on your bottom line. I’m proud of our low tax rate, and I’m also proud that our community is such a desirable place to live that the demand for housing pushes up the value of owned homes. Falling tax bills often mean falling value of properties, which isn’t good.
Don’t forget to vote in the upcoming election!