I guess if you report stuff 3 or 4 years after the fact, it doesn’t hurt as much?
A sampling of Sioux Falls-area residents responding to property tax valuation and resulting property taxes drew a consistent theme:
“Horrified,” one said.
“Severely risen,” another said.
“Absolutely robbery,” said another.
And finally: “At least I don’t feel all alone.”
You’re likely far from alone if your home’s assessed value has risen by double-digit percentages in recent years.
In Minnehaha County, the average increase in 2024 assessed valuations went up 9.1 percent compared with 2023. From 2022 to 2023, it went up 14.4 percent on average. The year before that, the increase was 18.4 percent.
Lincoln County recently saw a 8.7 percent average increase in valuation for 2024 versus 2023, following a 16 percent increase the prior year and a 14 percent increase from 2021 to 2022.
They F’ing railed me for 3 years, and I fought it, but no luck. I have owned my home 22 years this year, and in the first 17 my tax increases were either 0% or 1-2% and that changed because of this;
“We were playing catchup for many years, starting in 2016 to 2021, for sure,” said Karla Goossen, Lincoln County director of equalization. “So some folks saw a larger increase than the average and still this year as well.”
Government should NEVER play catchup! You work with the yearly coffers and budgets and everything starts anew next year. If you screwed up in the past, that’s on you, and you need to move forward with normal increases until you catchup. That may take 3-5 years, it may take 20, who cares?! If you think you were underfunded in years past, that is NOT the fault of the taxpayer, that is leadership issues, and why should WE pay for past mistakes?
Not to mention our city has over DOUBLE of what they need comfortably in reserves and fund play things to over $40-50 million dollars a year.
I am often amazed that our county, school district and city can even get out of bed in the morning let alone make decisions that affect not only our personal lives, but finances.
Catchup? WTF?! Maybe you should try to make my dead grandparents pay taxes on land they don’t own anymore? Yeah, sounds stupid, because it is.
Scott, great article. Also of noteworthy, the Legislature, led by Senator Chauffee, passed a bill this year to allow Counties to take ownership of all land based on the recorded property holder owing property tax held by the tax deed. Did the legislature just sell South Dakotans down the river? I wrote a nice land right, property right piece on Sioux Falls Community Chronicle on my Precinct Link. In it, I made the assessment that the Counties, Cities, and Landowners are colluding together to raise property values as part of a tax scheme to push ‘users’ off their properties. Add the much thought of discussion over the huge push to force property holders to surrender part of their land to Carbon Companies, and you have massive push to steal land in the future. It is all a tax scheme. There are some in Sioux Falls promoting Condensining land/property owership in this mixed use, building up concept vs sprawl. Which does nothing more than hike up property values, which the tax rates are assessed on. Great article.
Do you think? Meanwhile, the GOP around here is more worried about harassing transgenders, while the Dems are offended if an inmate can only go before the parole board once every four years.
Back in’95, Janklow increased the state’s take from video lottery from 33% to 50% to help reduce property taxes around here. Maybe it’s time to increase that take once again to 65 or 75% to help reduce property taxes around here. What does everyone else think?
Absent Kolbeck’s concerns, I was amazed how little discussion either side made in Pierre over the past two months concerning the cost of rising property taxes.
And, if you add to this debate the cost of skyrocketing home owner’s insurance, then you come up with the added reality that it’s only a matter of time before the blue tarp tents will start showing up all around here.
#Time4SomePrioritiesAroundHere
( and Woodstock adds: “Man, I miss it when we had K-Mart and they would have a ‘Blue Light’ special on their tarps”….. 🙂 )
The more the greedy developers and bond sellers work us over, the higher our taxes will be.
Our fellow taxpayers are taking the hit for all the stupid trumper biden garbage being spewed to hide the double dealing they are all doing.
We do not need a new billion dollar prison, we need the billion given back to us.
We need to cut the interference the book banners. We need to let teachers get back to teaching 3rd graders how to read so we don’t need prisons when they are 16 years old. Why can’t we let kids learn critical thinking to call out the bs being shoved down their throats.
We don’t need graduates who can drop irrelevant facts when they can understand what the facts mean.