SWANZEY — After enjoying a dip in the local education tax rate last year, Swanzey residents are bearing the brunt of a pendulum now swinging the other way.
Swanzey’s total tax rate is $27.84 per $1,000 of assessed value, meaning the owner of a property assessed at $200,000 will be billed $5,568.
This rate is up $5.45, or 24.3 percent, from last year’s $22.39.
Translation?
Owners of a home assessed at $200,000 can expect to see a $1,090 hike in their property tax bills.
“Overall, the major player in the increase was the school portion,” according to Town Administrator Elizabeth A. Fox.
Swanzey taxpayers will pay a local school tax rate that is nearly 30 percent higher than last year to support the Monadnock Regional School District.
Earl Wammack, the district’s business manager, was unavailable to comment on this hike.
But a tax-rate information sheet posted on Swanzey’s Web site attributes it to a variety of factors, including increased district appropriations, a decline in certain revenues and the reconfiguration of cost sharing resulting from Surry’s withdrawal from the district.
Swanzey’s tax rate to support Cheshire County government has also gone up, nearly 38 percent.
In October, Cheshire County Finance Director Sheryl A. Trombly told The Sentinel the county needed to raise about $5 million more in taxes this year.
Much of the increase, she said, is for the county’s new jail being built in Keene.
Meanwhile, the town portion of the tax rate is swelling 10.6 percent from last year.
This rise, Fox said, is the result of increased expenses across the board, along with town revenues that have softened with the lagging economy.
Among them, she said, is a drop in motor-vehicle registrations and a decrease in revenues from the land-use-change tax because of a decline in development. Due to lower interest rates, Swanzey has also seen a drop in the revenue it earns when the town places tax money in an interest-bearing account.
Swanzey’s ratio of assessment — last updated in 2004 — is 77.7 percent, meaning a property with a market value of $200,000 is assessed, on average, at $155,400, and homeowners would pay taxes on that amount.
Of every $27.84 Swanzey collects in taxes:
u $4.16 will go to the town government, up 40 cents, or 10.6 percent from last year’s $3.76.
This tax will raise $2,005,322 for the town.
u $17.70 will go to the Monadnock Regional School District, up $4.03, or 29.5 percent from last year’s $13.67. This tax will raise $8,532,099.
u $2.68 will go to the statewide school tax, up 12 cents, or 4.7 percent from last year’s $2.56. This tax will raise $1,280,403.
u $3.30 goes to Cheshire County government, up 90 cents, or about 37.5 percent from last year’s $2.40. Money from this tax — which will raise $1,590,115 — helps pay for services such as the county nursing home and jail.
Taxpayers in the North Swanzey Water and Fire Precinct will be billed an additional 74 cents per $1,000 of assessed value, down a penny from the extra 75 cents they were charged last year.
This extra money goes toward maintaining infrastructure for the precinct, which buys its water from Keene, according to Robert A. Beauregard, chairman of the precinct’s water commission.
Tax bills were mailed out earlier this month and are due Dec. 16.