Our town is looking at creating a fire protection district. I’m just curious how much the tax might be. I’m also curious how it’s levied. Flat rate per property or % of property assessed value.
Our town is looking at creating a fire protection district. I’m just curious how much the tax might be. I’m also curious how it’s levied. Flat rate per property or % of property assessed value.
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Where I am every town is covered. Are you in some unincorporated place like in Maine that’s only known by the code on the map like S13?
I’m not sure what this means lol
Every district will be different in terms of details but generally fire protection districts include more than one town/unincorporated area whereas fire departments are town-specific.
If your town is forming a fire protection district then generally speaking the tax rate would be an additional amount on top of the local property tax rate using the system already in place to assess property taxes. For example, most places use a mil rate system, where you would pay a certain dollar amount per $1000 of property value.
If your property taxes are determined using the mil rate system them you would have an additional value added to the mil rate. So say your mil rate is $4.06 per $1000, you’d see a line item added for the fire protection district. In this example lets say the FPD mil rate is $0.25. Your total rate would be $4.31 per $1000 property value with the FPD amount being specifically earmarked for the district.
However if your town is actually forming a fire department that solely services your town then the cost of the department would be fully integrated into your town’s budget. This would still likely raise the mil rate, but it would all be one item.
The only place I ever lived that had a district like that, it had three sources of income: state and local governments, traditional volunteer fundraising, and a $50/year fee paid by every dwelling unit in the district. We would get a bill every year.
Colorado here, so a somewhat western take on what may be handled very differently in other parts of the country: Fire protection per se is mostly covered by basic property taxes although there may be mix of other funds from sales taxes, State grants, etc. Fire departments will respond to any emergency in their area and will assist non local departments in major emergencies. Fire departments may request special tax levies via ballot to cover specific enhancements like upgraded equipment. These are often framed as a small local sales tax levy. Voters are generally pretty generous about granting approval.
Mine is 0.867% tax of the assessed value for real estate and personal property (cars/boats/RVs). However, the assessed value is 19% of the appraised value for residential real estate, 32% of the appraised value for commercial property, and 33 1/3% for personal property (cars, etc).
So, a house appraised at 500,000 is assessed at 95,000 and would pay about $825 in tax to the fire district.