Providence Tax Hike More of the Same Old Stuff

City Council Railroads Property Tax Rate Hike, Disses Mayor and More!

The property tax situation in the city of Providence has certainly got a lot of press lately. In some respects it hasn't gotten enough. And a nutshell, a tax revaluation was conducted in Providence and as expected values dropped based on current market value.  After the city gets done with all of its assessments are the finance committee then gets together with the mayor between his recommendations and their input a budget is born.

Under no circumstances this is not done overnight. Under normal circumstances this is kind of a team effort. Under normal circumstances the mayor and the city Council lookout for the best interests of the residents in their city. But, this is Providence were talking about, so this whole situation is everything but normal. You see, it's kind of important for all these folks to get along. This opportunity doesn't come around every month. When property values are assessed and the mill rate is applied (the dollar per thousand rate), the city then sends out the tax bills and collects the revenue and attempts to run the city with the funds acquired.

Now I'm not going to suggest that budget planning and execution and running a city government including all of its ancillary costs is by any stretch in easy task. However, when this CD looked to recover about $12 million to pay labor contracts it targeted a very small demographic which can have a very large ripple affect.

The city Council voted 8 to 7 to pass a tax levy increase on less than 5 unit, non-owner occupied dwellings i.e. the investment properties.  To begin with, the mill rate jumped from $24.21 per $1,000 of assessed value to $30.38, and increases the commercial-property tax rate from $28.60 per $1,000 to $33.70.

The next bullet in the gun was to strip a 33% tax exemption for these non-occupant owners.

What this little nugget means is that these landlords, whom the finance committee regards as "fat cats running businesses" will have to pony up more money.  But what the city Council fails to see (actually, they can see they just turned their heads the other way) is that we live in a trickle-down economic Society.  The increased costs to run these housing conglomerates will have to be passed down to the tenants because most of these landlords cannot afford this levy. The problem with this is that the tenants can afford it either.

Two really bad things are going to start happening. Firstly, landlords will have to forgo necessary maintenance and upgrades to their houses in order to pay for the higher tax. Consequently, property values in these neighborhoods will go down even further because of the condition of their neighbor's houses. Or worse, these houses may go into default, and we all know what short sales and foreclosures do for neighborhood house values. I think that's actually three bad things, I've lost count.

So the mayor was left with two options: veto the budget or let it pass. Generously, the city Council gave the mayor all of 48 hours to render a decision. And why is this so critical? Because the council takes a recess for the month of August. And if the mayor doesn't pass a budget before this time, then tax bills can't go out; the city can't collect any money; the city of Providence goes into receivership; everyone takes their rental investments to other places, and we skip ahead to foreclosures.

So there you have it. Politics as usual in the city of Providence. It's not just these "rich fat-cat" landlords having to shell out a few more bucks that are probably falling out of their pockets anyway. It's the "let's put our personal differences ahead of the constituents, regardless of the economic collateral damage" way of doing business in our capital city.