The city of Alexandria approved its 2023 ad valorem tax rate Thursday evening at a lower rate than the previous year.
An ad valorem tax is a tax based on the assessed value of an item, such as real estate or personal property. The proposed rate is $0.14 per $100 of valuation, down from the 2022 rate of $0.172 per $100, with a compensating rate of $0.135.
“That is the lowest rate by far that we’ve had since I’ve been here, and that’s 30-something years,” Alexandria City Attorney Mike Duncan said.
There are two parts that make up the tax. There’s the tax rate and the property valuation that the Campbell County Property Valuation Administration office sets.
“Each year, the property valuation administrator in every county will send out a report to different cities in the county,” Alexandria City Administrator David Plummer told LINK nky last month. “Totaling the amount of valuation in your community and our valuation in Alexandria exponentially increased from last year to this year by a large margin.”
The 2022 rate of $0.172 produced a revenue of $1,645,130. The expected revenue from the 2023 $0.14 rate is expected to be $1,709,024. Revenue from new property and personal property is expected to be $35,781.
Should property values go up, then the compensating rate would go down. If a city goes over a 4% compensating rate, then citizens can file a petition to get a referendum to reduce the tax rate back to what it was.
“We were in a situation where even if we take compensating rate to pull in the same amount of money we took last year, adjusting for inflation and taking that 4%,” Plummer said. “Overall, we’ll probably merit greater property revenue than we did last year by lessening the burden on personal homes.”
The 2022 taxable real estate assessment after exemption in the city was $956,470,942. The 2023 taxable real estate assessment after the exemption is $1,246,289,343. This equals about a 23.3% increase in valuation.