BRISTOL — Bristol tax rates are down across the board for the coming year, but what that will mean for individual tax bills will vary according to the results of the town-wide reassessment of property values that was completed this past spring.
The Bristol selectboard at its Aug. 6 meeting set the 2019 fiscal year municipal tax rate at $0.6989, (a decrease of $0.0627, or about 8 percent), and the police district tax rate at $0.3182 (a decrease $0.0453, or about 13 percent).
Residents within the one-square-mile police district will pay a combined municipal rate of $1.0171 per $100 of assessed property value.
The town’s education tax rates also fell, in part due to Act 46 school consolidation incentives, which include a tax discount of $0.08 this year. On July 1 schools in the Addison Northeast Supervisory Union merged into the Mount Abraham Unified School District and will from now on be governed by one school board.
Bristol’s FY2019 residential (homestead) education tax rate decreased by $0.2296 (13 percent) to $1.5270. The nonresidential education tax rate decreased by $0.1154 (7 percent) to $1.5650.
The overall residential tax rate decreased by 11.61 percent to $2.2259, and the overall nonresi­dential tax rate decreased by 7.29 percent to $2.2639.
The overall police-district resi­den­tial tax rate decreased by 11.72 percent to $2.5441, and the overall police-district non­resi­dential tax rate decreased by 7.96 percent to $2.5821.
Because the town-wide reassessment was recently completed in Bristol, the Common Level of Appraisal (CLA) now stands at 100 percent, which means there will no adjustment to educational tax rates this year, as there have been in the past. Any adjustments the state may make to Bristol’s CLA, which would likely happen in December, will not apply to the town’s education tax rates until fiscal year 2020.
Bristol residents paying on the full value of their property will see a reduction of $258 per $100,000 of assessed value of their homes, while police-district residents will see a decrease of $298. But whether or not these reductions translate into significantly lower tax bills will depend on how much individual property values have increased as a result of the assessment.
Residents who pay based on their incomes are likely to receive prebates for a portion of their school tax bills. About two-thirds of county residents receive prebates.
Tax bills are expected to go out in the middle of September.
Reach Christopher Ross at [email protected].