Tax bills go out to Bonner County residents

SANDPOINT — After property tax bills went out to Bonner County residents last week, many expressed frustration or confusion on social media with what they found inside.

According to Bonner County Treasurer Clorissa Koster, the majority of levies are down this year, but that is only one factor that goes into what a resident pays in property taxes.

How much an individual pays in property taxes is determined by taking the taxable market value of their property and multiplying it by the levy rate of each tax district the property falls under, Koster said. Once you add together what is owed to each tax district, you have the total a person owes in property taxes.

Taxing districts need roughly the same amount of money every year to fund the services they support. Whether the service is a local library district, an ambulance district or a school district, all must keep the lights on, pay personnel and replace aging equipment.

This means that if the market value of a tax district went down overall then the levy rate will increase to bring in the same amount of money for the tax district.

How that levy rate impacts each individual in a taxing district can vary. Even if an individual's levy rate has increased, if their property value decreased, or simply didn’t increase as much as other properties in the district, then they could pay less in property taxes than they did previously.

Koster said this interplay between the general trend in valuations and individual property valuations is just one of several factors that makes it difficult to generalize about property taxes. Even trying to generalize at the neighborhood level can be difficult.

Taxing districts are based on parcels, not property lines, the county treasurer said. This means that sometimes tax districts only run through part of a property, or split neighborhoods. She said one person in a neighborhood might be taxed by the East Bonner County Library District — which funds the library in Sandpoint — while their neighbor two doors down is taxed by the West Bonner Library District, which funds libraries in Priest River and Blanchard and has an entirely different levy rate.

Koster said she understands that people can be sensitive to property tax increases and, by extension, their property valuations.

“I watch my property tax bill, too,” Koster said.

When property tax bills are sent out, Koster said she knows property values and their changes become a hot topic in the community, but she said the community should be paying attention at the beginning of June when assessment notices go out informing the community on how their property valuation has changed.

“Everyone needs to be taking those assessment notices and looking at them,” Koster said.

Assessment notices are sent out on the first Monday in June and residents have until the fourth Monday in June to appeal their valuations. “By the time the (tax) bill comes, it’s too late,” Koster said.

Bonner County Assessor Dennis Englehardt said the assessor's office is required by law to appraise houses at market value and market value is based on house sales in a specific area the year prior.

A property’s 2024 value is set Jan. 1 based on the sales of houses near it throughout 2023.

Engelhardt said the county saw a huge increase in prices from 2018 to 2023, driven by a spike in demand.

“There was a time where you could list it (a house) on a Tuesday and it was gone by Thursday,” Englehardt said.

In 2018, he said the average home price was roughly $365,000 in Bonner County. In 2023, he said it was $800,000.

For those looking to sell their homes, this increase is great, Englehardt said. But for many lifelong residents of Bonner County, he said it is frustrating. For them, the increase simply means higher property taxes, sometimes beyond what they can afford.

He said that there has been a slight decrease in demand for homes and house sale prices in Bonner County in 2024 — excluding Schweitzer Mountain and lakefront properties — that will be reflected in 2025’s valuations.

To learn more about property taxes and assessments, Englehardt encouraged residents to look at the County Assessor’s new website, bonnercountyid.gov/county-assessor. The site allows residents to search their property to determine its valuation by clicking the box titled “property search” or learn more about how property taxes work by clicking on the box titled “property tax 101.”