watchdog

Sunday, July 26, 2009

THE GREAT PROPERTY ASSESSMENT SCAM

One of the most interesting research items that is now of interest me is the rising property tax payments on residential housing in Memphis and Shelby County in the last ten years.

Look at the City of Memphis CAFR for 2008 (Comprehensive Annual Financial Report) and the Shelby County CAFR. I have attached four pages from the City report and two pages from the County report that has to do with the property tax assessed values for residential and commercial property in the City and County. You will see that the residential property assessed value in Memphis went from $3.2 billion in 1999 to $5.2 billion in 2008, an increase of 62%. The commercial and industrial assessed value went from $3.6 billion to $4.3 billion an increase of 19%. For Shelby County the residential property tax assessed value went from $6.1 billion in 1999 to $10 billion in 2008, an increase of 64%. The commercial and industrial value in the County went from $4.4 billion to $5.4 billion, an increase of 22%. The total tax levies from 1999 to 2008 for the City and the County went from $545 million to $1.1 billion, an increase of 100%, basically doubled. The population increase from 2000 to 2008 for Shelby County is 1%.

Does any of this make sense to you, the taxpayers? The property tax assessor told us that the 8.8% increase in property values for Shelby County was perfectly alright and in accordance with reality. I went to zillow.com (an outstanding real estate valuation site) and found the following information.

  • Shelby County home values during the last year are down 10%, not up 8.8%.
  • Shelby County home values are up 17% in the last ten years, not 64%.
  • Inflation is up 30% over the last ten years, not 100% which is the take from property taxes.

I will be reporting further on what politicians are doing with the tax rate and what they are hiding from you, the taxpaying public.

Go to this website to verify this information. http://www.zillow.com/local-info/TN-Shelby-County-home-value/r_1388/#metric=mt%3D34%26dt%3D1%26tp%3D6%26rt%3D6%26r%3D1388%2C32811%2C10264%2C11594



Click here to see property tax data from the latest Memphis and Shelby County CAFR reports

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Well the budget battle (more like a rout) is over and the other shoe (millions more for the Memphis School System) is still to drop requiring more taxes this year. Now the Mayor is going to resign (or maybe not) requiring an expensive special election. What a circus.

I am still doing what I do and that is investigating and publishing information on the cost and excesses of our local political system and the need for REFORM.

I have attached to this email the expensive and inflated portion the City of Memphis personnel manual. We need to cut back on these benefits to bring them in line with the "for profit" world of taxpayers. I call you attention to the following candidates for reform.

  • Appointed employees- page 1. The charter needs to be changed to allow only a few appointed positions, if any.
  • Age requirements- page 2, an employee can go to work at age 18, work 25 years and retire at age 43 with his pension. The cost of health care to the City is huge between age 43 and the Medicare age and this early retirement age needs to be revised to the Medicare age.
  • Holidays- pages 3-4, 11 days
  • Vacations- pages 5-9, 5 weeks after 25 years. Too many, cut back to three or four.
  • Sick leave (2/1/2 days per MONTH) after 15 years. That is 6 weeks per year)/bonus days- pages 10-19. Way too many. Cut back to 1 per month.
  • Jury/witness duty- page 20-22
  • Death in family leave- pages 23-26, 3 days
  • Time allowed for voting- page 27, 3 hours
  • On the job injury- pages 28-31, 6 months with pay
  • Educational leave- pages 32-33, w/0 pay, 1 year plus
  • Personal leave w/o pay- pages 34-35
  • Retirement-pages 36-37 ( I will publish the complete pension system terms later).
  • Tuition reimbursement- pages 38-40
  • Rest Periods- page 41, ½ hour per day
  • Parking City Hall Garage- pages 42-43

I call on the Memphis City Council and the new Mayor (if we get one) to cut back these inflated benefits to the levels available to the people who pay the bills, the taxpayers.

For future reference and for employees and the public to use, I have attached in two files, the entire City of Memphis personnel manual. Due to the file size I had to put it in two files, pages 1 to 129 and pages 130 to 264.


Click here to see the above sections from the City of Memphis personnel policy manual


Click here to see the first half of the complete City of Memphis Personnel Manual


Click here to see the second half of the complete City of Memphis Personnel Manual