AV is up for county, down in cities

If you live in a city or town in Jay County, expect to see a bigger tax rate on your spring bills this year.

If you’re outside of municipal limits, it’s the opposite.

As spring property tax bills come due May 10, this year’s rates mostly went down, with 13 of Jay County’s 18 tax districts seeing lower rates for 2024 as compared to 2023.

But that’s a big “mostly,” as rates jumped up in all six municipalities, including by double digit percentages year-over-year in four cities and towns.

Although the spikes in assessed values that rocketed tax bills upward over the last few years have stopped, some municipal taxpayers could still see another bump in their annual bills for 2024.

Property tax rates are determined each year by taking the amount of taxes local governments need to raise, the levy, and dividing by the total assessed value of that units. Tax rates for overlapping individual units — county government, cities and towns, schools, libraries and townships — are added up to a total rate for a tax district.

In 2024, all of the rural township districts saw small drops in their tax rates of about 2%, driven mostly by a small reduction in the tax rate for the countywide Jay County School Corporation.

But in the cities and towns, rates were up significantly, with Portland seeing a 13.08% increase year-over-year, followed by Dunkirk and Pennville at nearly 12% increases and Redkey up 11%. 

Bryant and Salamonia had smaller increases, but still 7.3% and 5.8% changes, respectively.

Those increases aren’t being driven by major changes in local government spending, but instead in an across-the-board decrease in assessed values in Jay County’s cities and towns.

While the total assessed value of the county increased just shy of 3% from 2023 to 2024, values in the municipalities dropped. Dunkirk’s assessed value dipped 7.27%, followed by Pennville down 6.93% and Portland down 6.35% year over year. Bryant’s assessed value dropped 3.53% and Redkey and Salamonia both saw 1.68% declines in their total value. Those drops have made the denominator in the tax rate equation smaller, resulting in higher tax rates in 2024.

The drop in municipal values reverses a recent trend of spiking property values that has hit Indiana taxpayers hard since the pandemic. Jay County’s assessed value growth slowed to 2.93% in 2024 — growth around 3% would be considered “normal” in years prior to the recent volatility in prices — a far cry from the 14.71% spike the county saw from 2022 to 2023.

Neighboring counties in Adams, Blackford, Delaware and Randolph all saw values spike about 13% in 2023. This year’s change has been mixed for those neighbors — Adams and Delaware counties saw assessed values up about 3% like Jay County, but the numbers haven’t chilled elsewhere as Randolph County’s values are up 9% and Blackford County saw an even bigger increase than 2023, up almost 16% this year.

Other parts of the state have been seeing consistent double-digit increases in values for multiple consecutive years, which has caused tax bills to climb and put pressure on taxpayers.

Higher tax rates usually, but not always, mean bigger tax bills. Since assessed values are down year-over-year, if the value of your house dropped enough it could balance out the increase in the tax rate and your bill may be similar to 2023. If your value stayed the same, however, or increased, prepare to pay more to the county treasurer in May and November.

Property owners might also be saved by Indiana’s tax caps, which cap your bill at a 1% maximum of your total value. Since tax district rates in most of the municipalities are very high, property owners may already be capped out and therefore not see a significant change to their bills.