|Peter Bragdon, NG Budget Committee Vice-chair/ Acting Chair|
* Editors’ note: We reached out to Peter for a clarification of the increase in the tax rate for this year. Here’s his response.
As most of you are aware, last year was a challenging year for the town budget process and the tax rate went up. Was it 6.9% or 20+%?
Without having the exact number in front of me, I am confident in stating the town’s portion of the tax bill went up a little over 20%. Your tax bill as a whole saw an increase of 6.9% Why the difference? The majority of your tax bill goes to the school system, over 70% in fact. A little over 20% goes to the town and small portion goes to the county, around 4%. When you average the increases of the school department, the town and the county together, that is where the 6.9% increase came from. Still, a 20% increase on the town portion was significant. Apply a 20% increase to your household budget all at once; it’s not something that is recommended. It is certainly not something that can happen again this year, or at least in my opinion it shouldn’t.
For every $1,000 value of your house you pay $16.90 in taxes. An average $250,000 house will pay $4,225 this year as opposed to $3,950 last year and $3,365 5 years ago, yielding an increase on that same house of $860 since tax year 2013.
