Crunching the Numbers

We are getting very close to getting all the numbers we need to get an educated guestimate of how you as a Polk City Resident/Property owner will be affected financially if the people decide in a special election that Polk City's charter should be dissolved and it's residents return to unincorporated Polk County.   We were challenged to do the math to see if we were barking up the wrong tree and jumping the gun on starting the petition for a special election for the dissolution of the city.  We have taken on the Challenge!

It has taken a lot of phone calls, research, and time working on the formulas, but it's almost complete! From our initial findings, considering a worst case scenario of an assessed tax of the $10 Million city debt spread across the 1,200 Polk City property owners, most individuals will still be saving money compared to what they are paying now.  This $10 Million debt figure is a number that the city provided as an estimate of it's current debt as of a couple of months ago. The very few who may not be saving, will more than likely have such a small change that it will end up being less than $20 per month more. Again, this is a worst case scenario.  The balance of the sky high proposed millage rate of 9.65%, inflated water & sewer fees, inflated garbage rates, and additional taxes and fees added on other utility bills such as the electric bill in most cases cancel out any increases due to the added assessment tax and then some!  With all the hard work the current city officials are doing to reduce the current city debt and refinancing it's loans, if the city does get dissolved and it's assets are sold off, it is very likely that the rough estimate of $10 M city debt will be reduced. The guestimates we will be providing will be leaning towards the conservative side.

We do not make these statements lightly.  We are looking at a wide variety of individual situations from the ones in the city who are better off than others, all the way down to individuals who's properties have some of the lowest assessed values in city.  We are first concentrating on the Residential Taxes and Fees.  When those calculations are complete, we will start working on some comparisons for Commercial property owners.

Our plan is to have a way for City property owners/residents to provide us with only 5 key pieces of information:
1)   2010 Assessed Property Value - found on your most recent proposed tax notices received in the mail around the end of August.  Also found on the Polk County Property Appraiser's Web page: www.PolkPA.org

2)  2010 Homestead Exemptions - again found on the proposed tax notices or www.PolkPA.org

3)   Average monthly water consumption in gallons - found near the top of the Polk City Utility bill under "USAGE"
4)  If you are also on Polk City Sewer services
5)  Average monthly electric bill for the year


With just this little bit of information, we can provide an educated guestimate of how you as an individual may be affected financially by dissolving the city.  Obviously, there are many variables that are changing daily, but we are attempting to provide a rough idea of what you can expect.

We will let you know when our calculations are complete and everything has been double, triple, and quadruple checked for accuracy.