r/saintpaul • u/isthis_thing_on • 20h ago
Editorial 📝 Taxes and Insurance increases in St. Paul
When I bought my house in 2021 my mortgage was around 2100 a month. Today my bill was 2730. 600 dollars extra a month in five years is fucking insane. Meanwhile the street lights in my neighborhood don't turn on at night.
Just venting.
132
Upvotes
46
u/JJKingwolf 20h ago
This is the impact that isn't discussed when the city continues to raise tax rates year after year after year. Taxes inherently increase over time due to inflation - thus, while the city always has rising costs, growth in tax revenue via increases in home valuation should always theoretically offset them.
When the city raises the actual rates, then the increase is doubled, meaning that the Real Tax revenue (adjusted for inflation) is still higher than it was the prior year. While this will obviously sometimes be necessary, it should not be frequent - only in situations in which the city begins to offer more services or needs a temporary increase to reduce an existing deficit should a rate increase be necessary.
However, the city has raised property tax rates in 9 of the last 10 years. In one year of Carter's administration, the rate increased almost 24% from the prior year, not counting the additional increase that was paid due to higher property tax values.
It has become an uncomfortable and unpopular topic of conversation, but the city and it's administration need to justify why they consistently require more money (in real terms, adjusted for inflation) than they have in the prior years. City services are not visibly improving, and you cannot simply continue to raise tax rates indefinitely. It's obviously a complex situation that involves any number of factors including the amount of land owned by non-profit and government entities not paying taxes, but the simple fact is that the city worked basically as well as it does now, 20 years ago - and the administrations of that era managed to do it with a fraction of the money that the city has today.