County adopts property tax rates

Bond sale to cover capital projects for this year

The Yuma County Board of Supervisors formally adopted this fiscal year’s property tax rates for the county and all jurisdictions on Monday. The board also approved the sale of bonds to secure funding to cover capital projects for this year.

The board sets only the levies for the county and countywide library and flood control districts. But under state law, it’s required to formally approve the rates set by all cities, school districts, improvement districts and other entities within the county.

The county and two of its four municipalities — Yuma and Somerton — assess property tax rates, along with nine K-12 school districts, Arizona Western College, 21 irrigation and other special districts, and roughly 200 special improvement districts.

Although the county does not have any control over the budgets or tax rates set by other agencies, the county is responsible for billing and collecting property taxes for all governmental entities within its borders. The county must approve the rates to collect the taxes on their behalf.

Gilberto Villegas, chief financial officer, explained that the levies and rates for all districts were based on the primary and secondary values published in January by the County Assessor’s Office.

On June 18, the supervisors adopted the Fiscal Year 2018-2019 budget with a General Fund levy of nearly $30 million and tax rate of 2.5288 percent. On Monday, the county set a tax levy of $2.5 million and rate of 0.2522 percent for the Flood Control District; a tax levy of $7.8 million and rate of 0.6608 percent for Library District Operations; and a tax levy of $2.9 million and rate of 0.2426 percent for Library District Debt Service.

Chairman Tony Reyes pointed out that Yuma County has “by far” the largest number of improvement districts in the state, including Maricopa County. He explained the reason,

noting that when residents ask for improvements, while other counties might find a way to provide that service and have all county residents pay for it, Yuma County has a system set up to “make it easier for them to solve their own problems” by forming an improvement district and paying for improvements themselves.

The levies and rates for all the districts can be found at https://tinyurl. com/y6v4n3eq.

Supervisors also approved a plan to secure $5.3 million in funding for capital improvement projects in the 2019 budget. The supervisors held a public hearing on the plan on July 23, and no public comments were received.

The county hired Stifel, Nicolaus & Company to secure the revenues through the sale of municipal bonds to cover the principal amount of $5.3 million with an estimated interest of $873,842 for a total financing cost of $6.2 million.

The action came with an emergency clause to allow the transaction to close within 30 days before interest rates go up. Reyes said he and his fellow supervisors were “very leery” of using the emergency clause because it skips the process where citizens can question the action, but they believe the general public understands the need for expediency in this case.

Stifel, Nicolaus & Company sent out bids to 20 financial institutions and received 12 bids from around country, the largest amount of bids ever received in the office. The contract went to National Bank of Arizona, which had the lowest interest rate at 3.01 percent.

The plan was adopted unanimously.