Boone County considers special election on senior property tax freeze
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
The Boone County Commission held its first of two readings calling for a special election to further freeze senior property taxes for eligible seniors on Tuesday.
The reading comes after a petition from outgoing state Rep. Cheri Toalson Reisch (R-Hallsville) gained nearly 5,000 signatures from registered Boone County voters, asking the commission to pass what she is calling a “full property tax freeze.”
Toalson Reisch would like to see language eliminated from the current ordinance that states, “Levies related to any and all voter-approved bond indebtedness from any taxing entity.”
“I am proud to be a taxpayer watchdog. When I was mayor of Hallsville, we had the lowest sales tax levy in all of Boone County,” Toalson Reisch said. “What this does is help keep people in their homes that are 62 or older that have to pay taxes on their house. And it's not going to hurt the political subdivisions, the taxing entities like schools, etc. It's not going to amount to that much money in the big picture, but it will help people on the local level. Their taxes will not go down. This will just freeze them from going up.”
A state law allowing a property tax exemption for seniors went into effect Aug. 28, 2023. The freeze had to be put into effect by county commissioners. Boone County opted to resolve it by letting the voters choose to enact it.
Toalson Reisch feared the Boone County Commission wasn’t going to authorize one so she got to work on a petition. Boone County Clerk Brianna Lennon confirmed in a Monday email that the petition had enough petitions and was certified.
“I had about 100 volunteers all over the county, people based out of Centralia, Ashland and everywhere in between,” Toalson Reisch said. "But it just took a big push to get it done with strictly volunteer labor. Most initiative petitions on the ballot bring in millions of dollars from out of state, and we did not have that budget. So it was a real grassroots effort. The people want this.”
However, Presiding Commissioner Kip Kendrick pushed back on the notion, saying the delay was because the county was looking for more details about the new law so it could create a program that could stand up to any potential legal scrutiny.
“When Senate Bill 190 was passed, we joined almost every other county in the state in saying, ‘Hey, can you, General Assembly provide clarification?’ The General Assembly provided clarification in Senate Bill 756,” Kendrick said. “We were the first county to adopt a policy post passage of Senate Bill 756 and got the program up and going for seniors to be able to see the relief that they wanted.”
Boone County voters in April overwhelmingly approved to “exempt senior citizens from certain increases in the property tax liability due on such senior citizens’ primary residences,” the ballot language stated.
The county's website said eligible seniors will get a tax credit equal to the difference between the current year's tax liability and the tax liability on that property when the applicant becomes an eligible taxpayer. Eligible taxpayers from 2024 will see their tax credits applied to their 2025 real estate tax statement.
The deadline to apply this year will be June 30.
Kendrick said approximately 8,500 parcels are participating in the program, which includes “well over 10,000 seniors." That represents approximately 11.4% of all parcels in Boone County and represents approximately 21% of all single-family residential parcels, according to Kendrick.
The Commission adopted its senior property tax relief in May, with a deadline to apply on Oct. 1. The deadline to apply this year will be June 30. The program had four exceptions. Two statutory exemptions were part of Senate Bill 756, and the other two were constitutional exemptions
Boone County opted to enact the constitutional exceptions, along with 18 other counties across the state. The constitutional exemptions include an authorized blind pension fund and voter-approved bond indebtedness that becomes debt levies.
Toalson Reisch wants the blind pension fund to remain but requested that the voter-approved bond indebtedness be included in the freeze. Because of this Kendrick said Toalson Reisch's description of a “full property tax freeze” is inaccurate.
“If and when voters approve this and we're put in a position to carve out that constitutionally authorized voter-approved bond indebtedness and freeze it, then her freeze remains a partial freeze as well,” Kendrick said. "It’s important to note that it remains a partial freeze because the blind pension fund will continue to be exempted from the program and seniors will see incremental tax increases in property taxes as a result of that. So it’s certainly a partial freeze.”
Toalson Reisch argues that placing the program on the ballot was a waste of taxpayer money and that the commission wanted to pass it before SB 756 went into effect.
“In November of ‘23, the commission said they would take a hands-off do nothing approach until the law was clarified,” Toalson Reisch said. “But all of a sudden in 2024, they threw it on the April ballot. They did not have to put it in front of the voters. They did not have to cost the taxpayers money to do that. They could have just voted to do it and they didn't. So once it passed overwhelmingly, then in the dead of night, when nobody was looking over Memorial (Day) weekend, they did oppose and quickly passed it at the end of May not waiting for the new law to go into effect in August.”
Kendrick countered by saying the commission takes an oath to uphold the Missouri Constitution and that they wanted to ensure that they faithfully executed the program placed before them by the General Assembly.
“Laws don't just freeze, right. The fact that we passed this in May was so that seniors could take advantage of it and set their base here in 2024. That was the importance of that from a timing standpoint,” Kendrick said.
Since August, Buchanan, Ray, Jasper and Franklin counties have each adopted senior property tax relief programs with the same constitutional exemptions Boone County made.
A second reading for a special election will be held Thursday.
