Platte County has had a difficult 2025 reassessment cycle. Most stories I have read and heard put the blame on the county assessor. I have no idea if that is true or not, and the assessor defended himself here. All I know is that county assessor is a quirky elected position where if you simply don’t do your job, you actually make voters happier.
The state tax commission (STC) stepped into the below-market mess and required Platte County to increase its assessed valuations to a more accurate level. The county and the STC agreed to an across the board 6.8% increase on residential property in Platte County. This agreement is exciting to me, and yes, I realize it is weird to be excited by something like that. But I have been calling for years for counties to stop individually assessing every property and to do it using an average-based system. As I explained in my recent testimony before a House committee on property taxes:
Missouri should eliminate the practice of sending thousands of assessors out into our neighborhoods every other year to assess residential property. In the current system, each county assessor uses sale prices of comparable homes or other, less accurate, methods to assess every home in the county. The county’s average rate of increase—which is used for tax rate–setting purposes—is determined only after all of the homes are reassessed. I believe the process should be reversed.
. . . This article could serve as a starting point for the Missouri State Tax Commission as it worked with county assessors, local realtors, and online real estate resources to determine average county increases (or decreases) in valuation for each reassessment cycle.
Each residential, commercial, or agricultural property in a county could then be adjusted based on the county’s average for that particular class or subclass of property. The various tax rates could then be adjusted based on that average, and the vast majority of homeowners would be subject to the same resulting increase (or decrease) in their overall property taxes. This would eliminate wide discrepancies from house to house that undermine faith in the current system and sometimes lead to high tax increases for some homeowners even when the overall assessment increases are modest.
The final part is really the key. If everyone sees the same residential increase, then everyone’s tax rates can be rolled back the same amount as dictated by the Hancock Amendment, and everyone will more or less see the same, small property tax increase.
There is one potential flaw in the plan, which Platte County may be experiencing this year. If taxing districts find ways around rolling back their tax rates, then the idea doesn’t work. And from what I have been told by knowledgeable sources, school districts have started to aggressively move funding from their general service funds to their debt service funds. The latter is exempt from rate rollback requirements. I have been told that two school districts in Platte County are going to do this. (I hope that’s wrong.) I know of one school district in Lebanon that was planning to do it but instead “compromised” and moved most of the general fund rollback to the debt service fund but did allow a very small overall decrease in the total fund.
These are just a few specific examples, but I hear about it happening all over Missouri. However much ignoring the tax rate rollback by raising the debt service rate may be happening, it is wrong. School districts (or any government bodies) should not do this, and state government needs to amend the laws to make sure it can’t happen going forward.
