PIERCE CITY, Mo. (KY3) – Voters living within the Pierce City Fire Protection District in Lawrence, Barry, and Newton counties will decide on a tax increase during the August primary election.
According to language on the ballot, proposition one is asking voters if the board of directors of the Pierce City Fire Protection District be authorized to levy an additional tax of not more than 30 cents on the 100 dollars assessed valuation to provide funds for the support of the district? A simpler way to put it, the proposition, if it passes, would approve a 30-cent tax for every $100 of value when it comes to your property value, both real estate and personal property tax. Currently, with the way the levy is set up, you pay around 27 cents per every $100. Under prop one, that would increase to around 57 cents per $100.
So what does that all mean? Well for example, if you have a home that has a market value of $200,000, based of Missouri’s assessment rate for real estate, at 19%, your assessment value is $38,000. You multiply the $200,000 by 19% to reach that sum. From there, you divide the $38,000 by 100, which gives you 380. You then multiply that by the proposed 30-cent increase, which is .5762. That gives you a total of around $219 annually, or just over $18 per month. The language on the ballot looks vague. It doesn’t say what will be done with the collected funding, but according to the Pierce City Fire Protection District chief, Dan Alber, all that money stays with the district.
“Realistically, we could have asked for $2 per $100 but there was no way we were ever going to be able to ask for that, get it approved, nor do we want to,” said Alber. “We don’t want to put that tax burden on our citizens. So we were trying to find something that was a middle ground, kind of an equal out of both sides.”
Alber acknowledges that nobody likes having a tax increase, but he admits that having this extra funding will help the district be more prepared for the future and future expenses.
“If you think about everything that’s transpired since 2013 in the economy, with inflation, the continue rising cost of everything, it’s it’s not that the idea necessarily spawned out of anywhere, but necessity really,” said Alber “.We need to keep fire trucks operating safely and efficiently so we can respond to folks’ emergencies and be effective. When we get there, it goes to things like station maintenance. We had a roof repair one of our stations a couple of years ago that cost us over $16,000, a totally unexpected expense.”
Other fire districts are also proposing similar levies. The Logan-Rogersville Fire Protection District also has a similar proposition.
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