Payson Town Council tweaks property tax rates

By Matt Brabb
Mogollon Connection Editor

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The Payson Town Council made it official during a special meeting Thursday when they passed ordinance number 785 unanimously. The measure raised the Payson primary property tax by 15.6 percent, but lowered the secondary rate by 40 percent. The net result will be a 1.4 percent decrease in Payson’s take of the average resident’s property tax bill.

The decrease in the secondary rate was made possible because various bond debts will be retired soon. The primary rate will be raised to $0.2560 per $100 in assessed property value.

It may come as a surprise to most, but property taxes revenues are split among 11 different government entities. Payson receives a mere three percent of the total revenue generated by property taxes, and the property tax accounts for only about six percent of the revenue Payson expects to generate in the upcoming fiscal year.

Property taxes in Gila County are divided between a number of agencies, but fully 76 percent of the total is split between the Payson Unified School District (PUSD) and Gila County itself. The remaining 24 percent is split between nine other entities including Gila Community College, the state, Northern Gila County Sanitary District, Fire district assistance, libraries, and the Town of Payson.

The upshot is that when hikes are made to property tax rates by Gila County or PUSD, they have a far more significant impact to the bottom line for homeowners than when Payson raises its property tax.

Payson is far more reliant on the sales tax for revenue than property taxes. The town expects to collect almost 12 times as much by way of the sales tax than the property tax.

Town Finance Director Cindy Smith stated at an earlier meeting that the increase in the primary tax rate could help to make up for the decrease in the assessed property value the town has recently seen.