Copyright keenesentinel
As a resident of Ward 3 in Keene I was pleased to read the lead Sentinel article on Oct. 28, “Property taxes at top of mind for Keene Ward 3 council candidates.” I would like to take this opportunity to remind all candidates and members of the City Council, as well as the Mayor, City Manager, City Planner, School Board and rest of our city government that the amount of money we spend through our budgets is only one of several factors that go into the calculation of our property taxes. An extremely critical number is the total assessed value of all the taxable property in the city. In Keene that number, roughly $3 billion, is relatively low compared to our peer communities across the state, those municipalities with similar population numbers. That means that in order to raise a certain amount of tax money, our tax rate must be significantly higher than those other municipalities. Communities such as Salem or Londonderry have total assessed values two or three times more than Keene. There are several factors that lead to this situation. One of the key factors is the amount of non-taxable property in the community. Keene has a much greater percentage of non-taxable property than our peers. Some of that is beyond our control such as geography, which makes us the economic and political center of the Monadnock Region. We host the courts, the hospital, the majority of churches, the college, the low income housing, the county jail etc. We do benefit from hosting those activities, but it all does combine to drive up our local property taxes. Our city government needs to be more aware of the effect of all that non-taxable property. That situation needs to be considered in every decision to remove more property from the tax rolls. There should be a cost benefit analysis made before such transactions are approved. Most people probably did not see any relationship between the acquisition by the hospital of the former Peerless Insurance Property and Keene schools, but our school taxes increased as a result of that property change. It’s simple arithmetic. When that high valued property came off the tax rolls every remaining property taxpayer had to take on a piece of the tax bill that had been previously paid by Liberty Mutual Insurance. We need to pay more attention to our tax base. EDWARD MURDOUGH
