Hawkeye Reporter

The Tax Education Foundation (TEF) – Iowa recently released its official City Property Tax scorecard that analyzes the property taxes of each city to inform residents of their relative rates.

In a similar system to the TEF's county property tax index, the city scorecard decides each ranking based on three measurements from Fiscal Year 2016 to Fiscal Year 2017: change in property tax rates, change in property tax revenue relative to inflation and population growth, and change in the total revenue per resident. All information was pulled from the Iowa Department of Management and the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data.

Each city was awarded one point for a decrease, zero points for no change, and minus-one point for an increase. The individual points were then collected and totaled for their final rankings.

TEF – Iowa Policy Director John Hendrickson | https://www.tefiowa.org/

TEF – Iowa Policy Director John Hendrickson explained that this list, also like the county property tax index, is intended to effectively communicate each city’s financial situation with taxpayers.

“Those indexes are basically to provide better transparency for how taxes have changed, either going up or down in various cities, and so, all that is based upon government data on city and county budgets,” Hendrickson told Hawkeye Reporter.

Shenandoah, Dyersville, Adel, Centerville and Fort Madison all earned the highest possible score of 3. Receiving the lowest score of -3 were Evansdale, Denison, Hampton, Red Oak, Carlisle, Newton, Windsor Heights, Dubuque, Sheldon, Perry, Ottumwa, Urbandale, Asbury, Cherokee, Decorah, Clive, Storm Lake, Marshalltown and Orange City. The scorecard included 100 cities overall.

The TEF could not determine specific reasons for each city’s change in rates or revenue, as each one has unique circumstances for its standings. According to the TEF, Iowa cities collect 29 percent of all the state’s property taxes.

“One objective of TEF – Iowa is to provide citizens with accurate information in terms of Iowa’s tax and budget process, and so certainly we would support policies that would lower tax rates,” Hendrickson said. “We also want to empower Iowans with good information to make sure that they understand a lot of what’s going on, especially how their tax dollars are being used.”