Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
Property values are up in Sweet Home and across Linn County, with one exception, this year.
The value of property inside the Sweet Home city limits increased by almost $20 million from 2006-07 to 2007-08, from $301.8 million to $321.5 million, a 6.53 percent increase The value of property in Linn County increased from $6.8 billion to $7.09 billion, a 4.31 percent increase.
The new values are based on assessments completed by the county assessor’s office in January 2007.
Millersburg experienced the only decline in property value, from $495.3 million to $461 million, a 6.92 percent decrease.
When she prepared the city’s budget last spring, city of Sweet Home Finance Director Pat Gray had to make an educated guess on how much property value would increase. She came close.
“I figured 6 percent in the budget for the police and library,” Gray said.
The additional .53 percent represents just over $1 million in value.
Gray hopes that the value increase will help reduce the property tax compression effect caused by 1990’s Measure 5.
In some cases, the city’s library and police levies and the county law levy do not receive the full amount of tax levied due to the limitations of the measure.
Gray anticipates compression in the city’s annual budget, she said. She is hoping that the compression will have even less an effect in Sweet Home than she budgeted. If it does, it will mean more revenue to the city police levy and library.
It also will mean more revenue for the Linn County Sheriff’s Office.
“Millersburg is heavily industrialized,” County Assessor Mark Noakes said. “Based on a reduction of a larger paper plant, it went down.”
The state Department of Revenue values large industrial plants, he said.
The county has a lot of new subdivisions, Noakes said. “Even Sweet Home did fairly well this year.”
Harrisburg has led growth in the past four or five years, Noakes said. “The reason they didn’t (this year) is they’re out of land.”
Harrisburg property values grew 4.46 percent to $151.9 million.
Harrisburg has requested that the Board of Commissioners approve its annexation of more land, he said.
Under state law, assessed property values, the value used to calculate taxes, can only grow a maximum 3 percent per year unless there is new development, new construction, remodeling and new subdivisions on the property, Noakes said.
Real market values may grow more than 3 percent per year, creating two different valuations.
Value growth “is down a few percent, especially for the county,” he said. “Again we haven’t seen values go down” in terms of residential areas.
“It’s not quite as good as the year before, but it’s still positive.”
Things have been pretty good, though the county has probably experienced a flattening in property values, he said. If there’s a downturn, it won’t show up until next January’s valuation.
He doesn’t expect much of a dip in the east county, he said.
“The average cost of a home is a lot less than in Benton County, for example,” Noakes said. That’s why people are living in Lebanon and Sweet Home, so “we might see a blip up. Who knows?”
Tangent values increased the most in the county, by 11.12 percent to $105 million. Halsey values increased by 10.28 percent to $39.5 million.
Lebanon values grew by 6.97 percent to $711.3 million. Albany grew by 5.87 percent to $2.4 billion, and Brownsville grew 6.73 percent to $70.9 million.