Dateline: July 26, 2007

Growth in appraisal values slows down

By Roger Estlack, Clarendon Enterprise

Clarendon College Regents received more bad news Thursday when the Donley County Appraisal District reported little growth in taxable property valuations for 2007.

CC officials were already stressed by Gov. Rick Perry’s veto last month of more than $460,000 in state funding for the college and are now faced with a local tax base that is not growing as fast as in recent years.

The appraisal district is reporting a total tax base of $171,772,641 in the college district in 2007, which includes all of Donley County. That is up less than three-tenths of one percent over last year’s base of $171,291,227 or an increase of $481,414.

By comparison appraisals increased $5.39 million or 3.2 percent from 2005 to 2006 and were up $5.9 million or 3.7 percent from 2004 to 2005.

Appraisal district officials could not pinpoint any one reason for the slow growth.

“There was basically not much of an increase in any of the categories,” Chief Appraiser Paula Lowrie said. “Usually there is a big increase in values for utility properties, but we didn’t have that this year.”

The value of single-family residences in the county increased from $69,955,263 last year to $70,498,197 this year; but other categories, such as mineral values and special inventory values declined.

The appraisal district reported 574,768 acres in either farm, irrigated farm, or pasture production. Values for agriculture property declined from $144,550,501 last year to $144,490,225 this year.

The total market value of all property – including personal property – in the college district was reported at $336.5 million, which is up from $317.6 million last year. The total market value is the actual value of property before adjustments, exemptions, and abatements are applied.

The tax base for the City of Clarendon actually shrank from almost $52 million last year to $50.8 million this year, but the value of single-family residences in the city rose slightly from $27.9 million last year to $28.1 million this year.

The average single-family home in Clarendon is valued at $33,927 this year.

“Things just are not selling as much over values as they were,” Lowrie said. “We also did a complete on-site review of houses in Clarendon. A lot of values went down because of depreciation.”

Lowrie said slow growth or a decline in values does not affect some entities like it does others.

“The school is looking at a lower tax rate anyway, but the state is making up the difference,” she said. “The city has other means of raising revenues, but the college has no where to go.”

Lowrie said that property values will likely look better in the next couple of years as improvements that have been abated begin to come back on the tax rolls.