It’s that time of year again: property tax statements will arrive in mailboxes starting in mid-October.
Property taxes support essential services provided by schools, counties, cities, special districts and other local governments, including Metro, but property tax statements don’t provide detailed information about what tax money to a particular government gets spent on.
To better illustrate how revenues from property taxes are spent at Metro, the agency maintains a website, at www.oregonmetro.gov/propertytaxes, to describe exactly how Metro assesses property taxes and what the money pays for.
Many taxpayers may be surprised to learn that Metro receives a small percentage of its total annual revenues—only 18 percent—from property taxes. Most of the property tax revenue collected by Metro pays for voter-approved capital projects with very little of it supporting day-to-day operations.
Since 1986, the region’s voters have approved five bond measures that enabled Metro to borrow against future property tax revenues to pay for capital projects such as the building of the Oregon Convention Center, the purchase and protection of natural areas and improvements to the Oregon Zoo.
These projects are initially funded through bonds sold to investors. The investors are repaid, with interest, from revenues received through additional property tax assessments. These assessments remain on property tax statements until the bonds are fully paid.
Additionally, Metro has a permanent operating levy of 9.66 cents per $1,000 of assessed value that provides five percent of Metro’s operating revenues. The remainder of Metro’s operating revenues comes from state and federal grants, enterprise revenues such as Oregon Zoo admissions and fees paid by users of venues such as the Oregon Convention Center, excise taxes paid by users of Metro-operated facilities like Metro South garbage and recycling transfer station, and other sources.