Coffee heat rising

property tax

{gasp!} Property tax bill

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The county finally got around to sending this year’s property tax bill, only a month or so late. They’re so close on the deadline that I’ll have to transfer the money out of savings instantly and ship off a check this weekend; otherwise I’ll be delinquent.

The tab: $2,058.86. Now…yes, I do realize that compared to property taxes in certain Midwestern and Eastern Seaboard states, this is as nothing. (But let’s remember: the educational system and other accouterments of a civil society are also as nothing here.) Compared to last year’s tab, it’s exactly $20 less.

That’s surprising. SDXB’s tax bill, which is rock bottom because his part of Sun City was never gerrymandered into a school district, rose by fifty bucks this year.

Everyone’s bill was jacked up, despite the large cut in property valuation occasioned by the busted real estate bubble, because our cash-strapped “no tax-and-spend” state legislators revived a defunct state property tax. So even though our valuations are in the sub-basement, where they belong, our taxes are just as high as they were at the height of the bubble.

We won’t comment on what they buy. Oh, what the heck…yes, we will: vast layoffs of state workers, grade school classes with 50 kids in them, reduced forces of emergency workers, closed museums, reduced library hours…all manifestations of a Killed Beast.

I’m grateful to get a bill that’s no higher than last year’s. Next year, it should drop considerably, because of various political promises to undo this, that, and the other device to raise funds. But by then, property values will have risen closer to normal, providing another reason to raise the tax bill.

Don’t mind paying taxes if we get some value received…but just now, that doesn’t seem to be happening. My two thousand bucks could keep a state worker on the payroll a good month (maybe more). Taken together, everyone on this block could keep her working a year or 18 months. So…let’s see that happen, boys!

LOL! Forget that!

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Well, La Maya managed to get into the County Recorder’s site and extract some information about the cute little Willo house. Taxes not only are NOT lower on a house and lot signficantly smaller than mine, they’re higher: $2,641. Good lord. I almost fainted when I got this year’s bill for $2,050!

Even if the utility bills are lower (they won’t be: the house is in a district served by one of priciest utility companies in the country, which charges extravagant amounts per KwH to fund its white elephant of a nuclear plant), I certainly can’t afford that. So…looks like it’s gunna be Sun City for me. Day-um!

Thank goodness! And . . . gasp!

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Two scary envelopes arrived in the mail today: one from the county tax assessor and one from my financial manager. I figured both would bring bad news.

And yea verily: even though the sale value of my house has dropped $50,000 over the past couple of years, the assessor’s biannual estimate of its value has gone up by $33,000, raising my taxes from the $1,500 I paid when I moved in about four years ago to almost $2,100.

However, this moment of gloom was relieved by a report from the redoubtable Stern and Reimer, who, despite the drumbeat of unnerving economic news, contrived to make my investments earn $2,265 in August.

LOL! Just about enough to pay the taxes!

In fact, I have the tax money in hand, accumulated by dint of a $300-a-month setaside from my paycheck. So I can pay the assessor this year. But next year: ????

The $3,600 annual impound into a savings account is to cover property tax, homeowner’s insurance, and car insurance. It used to cover annual car registration, too, but because my car is now eight years old, I can pay that out of cash flow. If my car were newer, I couldn’t do that.

Now the problem is . . . the combined cost of 2008’s property tax, homeowner’s insurance, and car insurance will come to $3,700.

And three hundred bucks a month is pushing the envelope of what I can afford to set aside. State employees received no merit or COLA increases this year, and will not as long as the economy is in the toilet. In the past, we’ve gone several years at a time with no raises whatsoever. So: they raise our taxes, but they don’t raise our pay.I haven’t retired yet, and already the basic cost of keeping the government from confiscating my home or my car and providing enough coverage to rebuild if the aluminum wiring sets fire to the joint is passing my ability to pay it.

What this demonstrates is what I’ve already begun to suspect: I will not be able to stay in my home in retirement.

If there was any question about that, this tax bill answers it, plain and clear.