Originally published in the weekly newspaper print edition of the Yellowstone County News.
BILLINGS — Property tax bills arrived in mailboxes across the county this week, with many taxpayers seeing adjustments to their tax bills after school districts recertified their mill levies.
County Treasurer Sherry Long said the first half of property tax payments are due Dec. 15. The second half is due May 31, 2017, she said.
She wanted to clarify that school district budgets did not change for districts that requested recertification. Although Pioneer School was listed in an earlier story in the Yellowstone County News, Long said that district did not request recertification.
Schools which recertified their elementary and high school levies included Custer (0.92 mill increase), Broadview (1.83), Huntley Project (0.88), Lockwood (0.66), Shepherd (0.91), Independent (0.53), Molt (0.94), Morin (1.25), Laurel (0.45 mills) and Billings (1.32).
Elementary schools that send their high school students to SD2 will experience a .30 mill increase for SD2 high school levy increase, even if they did not recertify their elementary levy. (A mill equals one-thousandth of a percent.)
NorthWestern Energy negotiated with the state regarding the state’s reassessment of its property value statewide, from 2015 to 2016, increasing it from about $2.2 billion to $2.6 billion. Rather than formally protesting the increased value, Northwestern Energy negotiated with the Department of Revenue to reduce the assessment to $2.4 billion, reducing their taxable value by $220 million, and reducing their potential tax bill by about $10 million.
Because of the timing of the negotiated settlement, the state, in an unusual move, allowed taxing jurisdictions impacted by the change to re-certify their taxable values. Lower taxable property values require an increase in the amount of mills levied in order to generate the same amount of revenue.
