Property tax mailings force a high price tag on the county

     During the March 26 Jones County Supervisors meeting, County Auditor Whitney Hein updated the board on the new property tax mailings.

   With the new property tax law (HF 718), the county was required to mail out a property tax statement to all county residents. However, the statement was not a true indication of how one's property taxes would be affected by the county's FY 2025 budget. As Hein has noted in the past, the statement only had to include the county, city, and school district's proposed FY 2025 tax levies.

   The statements had to be mailed out by March 20, announcing not only the levies, but the county's April 2 public hearing.

   "By code, the county auditor is required to prepare and send those out," said Hein, "which means that the county bears all of the cost of the mailings."

   In all, her office sent out 10,768 letters. Early on in the process, Hein said she budgeted $10,000 for this additional step, hoping it would cost between $7,000 and $8,000. It cost the county $9,276.26, about 86 cents each.

   "Just so the public is aware, that was a state law that our legislators changed to make us spend more money," commented Supervisor Jeff Swisher.

   Hein indicated that some property owners received more than one mailing because they weren't able to correlate addresses. If you have more than one parcel, you received more than one mailing.

   "Once we get another year under our belt, we may be able to weed some of those (duplicate property owners) out," offered Hein. "It could be less pieces (mailings) next year."

   Supervisor Joe Oswald said in 10 years of sending out these required mailings, unless the state law changes, it could cost Jones County over $90,000.

   "Postage dictates a lot," added Hein. "Over $6,000 of the mailing was just postage."

   County resident Sherrie Thurston commented that the statement from her school district included a website that directed with the public notice.

   "But for the county, it just had the county website. So I'm not really sure what that website is supposed to do," she said. "It really didn't get me to something that was relevant."

   Hein said she includes the county's website (jonescountyiowa.gov) on all of their public hearing notices.

   "The exact same information is posted on the board of supervisors' webpage," she offered. "The school is in charge of getting you their information; we don't control what the schools do."

   "According to the state and the explanation of the document," continued Thurston, "it says you have to provide a site. The website provided is not relevant to the tax statement. I don't know what it's meant to do."

   Hein said providing the county's website on the new property tax statement is nothing new compared to having the website on past public notices.

   "I'm not sure what the state is after," she told Thurston. "We do have a website where you can find that information."