PORT TOWNSEND – The state Legislature’s reinstatement of a tax cap on Thursday leaves Port Townsend City Council’s decision Tuesday to raise property taxes through using banked capacity still standing.
But the council’s action drew a brickbat in Olympia on Thursday from state Rep. Lynn Kessler, D-Hoquiam, who represents the North Olympic Peninsula.
She said Port Townsend’s hurry-up action – taken although Gov. Chris Gregoire asked local governments to hold off in the wake of a Supreme Court decision voiding Initiative 747 – “made it harder for us.”
In addition to replacing a 1 percent cap on annual increases of tax revenues – an action taken after the state Supreme Court found I-747, which instituted the cap, unconstitutional – the Legislature in special session Thursday also permitted any banked capacity accrued before I-747 to remain in place.
That left the city of Port Townsend $168,000 in pre-747 banked capacity – the difference between what the city levied and what the state would have permitted it to levy – to use to raise property taxes in bills expected to go out next year.
That means that the owner of a home valued at $300,000 will see an estimated tax increase of between $42 and $43 a year, said City Manager David Timmons on Thursday.
