SWANZEY \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
Swanzey\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
This rate is up $5.45, or 24.3 percent, from last year\u2019s $22.39.<\/p>\n
Translation?<\/p>\n
Owners of a home assessed at $200,000 can expect to see a $1,090 hike in their property tax bills.<\/p>\n
\u201cOverall, the major player in the increase was the school portion,\u201d according to Town Administrator Elizabeth A. Fox.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Earl Wammack, the district\u2019s business manager, was unavailable to comment on this hike.<\/p>\n
But a tax-rate information sheet posted on Swanzey\u2019s 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\u2019s withdrawal from the district.<\/p>\n
Swanzey\u2019s tax rate to support Cheshire County government has also gone up, nearly 38 percent.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Much of the increase, she said, is for the county\u2019s new jail being built in Keene.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the town portion of the tax rate is swelling 10.6 percent from last year.<\/p>\n
This rise, Fox said, is the result of increased expenses across the board, along with town revenues that have softened with the lagging economy.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Swanzey\u2019s ratio of assessment \u2014 last updated in 2004 \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
Of every $27.84 Swanzey collects in taxes:<\/p>\n
u $4.16 will go to the town government, up 40 cents, or 10.6 percent from last year\u2019s $3.76.<\/p>\n
This tax will raise $2,005,322 for the town.<\/p>\n
u $17.70 will go to the Monadnock Regional School District, up $4.03, or 29.5 percent from last year\u2019s $13.67. This tax will raise $8,532,099.<\/p>\n
u $2.68 will go to the statewide school tax, up 12 cents, or 4.7 percent from last year\u2019s $2.56. This tax will raise $1,280,403.<\/p>\n
u $3.30 goes to Cheshire County government, up 90 cents, or about 37.5 percent from last year\u2019s $2.40. Money from this tax \u2014 which will raise $1,590,115 \u2014 helps pay for services such as the county nursing home and jail.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s water commission.<\/p>\n
Tax bills were mailed out earlier this month and are due Dec. 16.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SWANZEY \u2014 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\u2019s 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,100,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles-nh","category-assessing","category-education","category-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7156,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions\/7156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}