Property taxes rising again on the home front

Metro area home values are rising — and now, property-tax bills are, too.

In some parts of the seven-county metro area, taxpayers are in for a jolt after several years of savings. In the Dayton's Bluff neighborhood just east of downtown St. Paul, for example, the average homeowner is eyeing a whopping 18.5 percent tax hike.

Jim Wardlaw, a 25-year resident of the East Side, will see his property taxes jump by nearly 50 percent. Despite the spike, he says, "there's good in the bad." At one time, his street was riddled with crackhouses. Now that they're gone, his home value is up 33 percent.

But taxes are not just a product of market value changes — a common misconception — but of government spending in the form of levies that are being finalized this month.

Still, the story for 2015 is about home values outpacing those of commercial-industrial properties in many places — and homeowners, in turn, taking on a greater share of the property-tax burden.

In the 32 communities with increases matching or exceeding the 7.2 percent hike projected for St. Paul's average homeowner, all but one city saw the value of its median-valued homes climb by more than 10 percent. In St. Paul, the home-value increase was 11.1 percent. In Shakopee, it was 14.3 percent; in Stillwater, 16.3 percent; in Fridley, 18.1 percent; and in Corcoran, 21.2 percent.

In Minneapolis, the median-valued home recorded a more modest 6.5 percent increase. Minneapolis also was pegged as one of several Hennepin County communities that could be aided by new commercial construction. Today, preliminary tax notices show more than half of Minneapolis homeowners looking at potential property-tax reductions.

Hopes are that market values begin to rise more evenly, easing the roller coaster effect for homes and businesses, and bringing stability to future tax and mortgage payments for seniors and others.

"To have a monthly expense like that go up a lot is difficult for people to absorb," St. Paul City Council President Kathy Lantry said last week.

Not a lot can be done on the spending side — at least not at this stage. In the publication, Understanding Your Property Tax Changes, the Minnesota Center for Fiscal Excellence, a group promoting "sound tax policy, efficient spending and accountable government," acknowledges that citizen input at Truth in Taxation hearings isn't likely to produce big changes in coming tax bills.

Last week, 23 people spoke at Ramsey County's tax hearing. Later, however, when the St. Paul School District and city of St. Paul held their respective hearings, not one person stepped to the microphone to talk taxes. The turnout was slim, too, in Hennepin County. When one man, a Plymouth homeowner, told County Board members that the county — the state's most populous — must be doing something right, Board Chairman Mike Opat joked: "You can stop right there."

Earlier this year, Anoka County officials had predicted homeowners would be shouldering more of the cost of local government in 2015. Double-digit percentage increases are, indeed, on the way in Fridley, Anoka and Columbia Heights.

He echoed, too, hopes for a smoother distribution of the tax burden in the future.

Looking ahead in Ramsey County, the recovery as it relates to home values is expected to continue affecting neighborhoods in different ways. Overall, however, residential values continue to rise, officials say, and in a good way, too — without, that is, the steep climb that's intensified the hit on homeowners in 2015.

Staff writers Erin Golden and David Peterson contributed this report.

Anthony Lonetree • 651-925-5036