Property tax statements for 2020 came out in the mail during the past week, and many in the Yuma area noticed quite an increase from 2019.
The first inclination was that the Yuma-1 $16 million bond issue passed last November was the cause.
While it did indeed increase property tax rates — more than $40 per $100,000 value for residential — Yuma County Assessor Cindy Taylor confirmed there were other, bigger factors involved.
She explained that 2019 was a reappraisal year. Values went up in Yuma County anywhere from 10 to 35 percent depending upon where you live. Some areas that hadn’t seen an increase in years got a large increase because of the sales that had happened in that “Neighborhood” — sales drive the valuation of your house in Colorado.
Taylor also said Yuma-1 helped their taxpayers because the district refinanced the previous bond debt, which resulted in the district being able to keep the mill levy increase lower than it would have been without the refinancing. For example, Wray School District RD-2’s bond mill levy for the current school project, of which the bond issue was passed in 2018, is more than 6 mills higher, while Yuma-1’s is approximately 4 mills.
The county assessor also shared that people can look at the abstract online at yumacounty.net. Under “Departments” go to “Assessor” and at the bottom of the page, one will see that 50 percent of tax money goes to the schools. The rest goes to support other entities like fire districts and hospitals, along with municipalities.
