How the 2024 Referendum Could Affect Mahomet-Seymour Homeowners: Understanding Property Assessments

Here are the top points of the article:

2023 Tax Increase: Many Mahomet-Seymour homeowners saw a significant tax increase in 2023, not due to higher tax rates but because assessed property values increased by 8.5%.
2024 Assessed Value Increase: Regardless of whether the referendum passes, Champaign County predicts a 10% increase in assessed property values for 2024.
Higher Tax Revenue: Even if tax rates don’t increase, taxing bodies like the Mahomet-Seymour School District collect more tax revenue because of higher assessed values.
Example Tax Impact: A home currently valued at $318,150 was taxed $7,918 in 2023, and the Mahomet-Seymour School District received $4,636, a $393 increase from the previous year.
Future Assessments: Mahomet-Seymour homeowners can expect their property values and, consequently, taxes to continue rising annually.
Referendum Effect on Taxes: If the 2024 referendum passes, tax rates will increase, leading to a 33.45% increase in property taxes for a home with a current value of $318,150.
Long-Term Tax Burden: Over 20 years, Mahomet-Seymour homeowners could face significant tax increases based on the referendum, with some properties seeing increases of over $42,000.

Most property owners think about the market value of their property or the amount of property tax they owe each year. One thing property owners don’t really think about is the annual county assessment of their property.

But to understand how the 2024 Mahomet-Seymour referendum will affect residential property owners (should the measure pass) it is important to understand Champaign County’s assessment of property.

For those who pay attention to their property tax bill each year, the 2023 bill was a bit of a shock. Residents noticed a substantial increase in what they owed in property taxes from the previous year. That increase came not because taxing bodies raised their rates, but because the assessed value of the property increased by about 8.5-percent, which was a 3-percent increase over the previous year’s increase.

Predicting assessed increases is not a given, but, just for note, values on the Champaign County property tax website show that Mahomet-Seymour property owners can expect a 10-percent increase in their 2024 assessed value, whether the 2024 school facility referendum passes or not.

Click on images below to see how the assessed value of these homes change year to year

Because of this, even though taxing bodies, like the Mahomet-Seymour School District or the Village of Mahomet, may or may not raise their tax rate, those bodies receive more money each year from the property tax payer.

For example, a home (occupied by the owner) in Mahomet with a current market value of $318,150, was taxed $7342.70 in 2022 on an assessed value of $97,740 and was taxed $7,918.36 on an assessed value of $106,050 in 2023. From this homeowner, the Mahomet-Seymour School District, which currently receives $.58 for every dollar of property tax paid, received $4,242.15 in 2022 and $4,636.12 in 2023. No referendum was passed and this homeowner paid $393.97 more to the school district in property tax in 2023 than in 2022.

Below are examples of how this works with homes with other values so that readers can find something similar to their own property:

As was noted, even without the 2024 referendum, Mahomet-Seymour property tax payers can expect their assessed value to increase again because, generally, assessed values do increase each year, even if by a small margin. Data already available through the Champaign County website shows that the 2024 value is estimated to be as much as 10-percent over the 2023 assessment. Homeowners will receive this bill in June 2025.

This would mean that for the same $318,150 market value home, the assessed value goes up to $116,600, with total taxes paid at 8,753.33 and $5,124.98 going to the Mahomet-Seymour School District. This is a $488.86 increase over the previous year.

To understand how this works with a few different home values, see below:

Should the referendum pass, homeowners will see even more of an increase moving forward. Assessments will continue to go up each year, and the tax rate will be higher, going from 4.6338 percent, to 5.5938 percent. This means that the home with the $318,150 home value will see a 33.45-percent increase in what they are paying the school district in property taxes over the previous year.

The 2024 assessment value would remain the same at $116,600, but the total amount paid in property taxes would go up to $9,815.09. The Mahomet-Seymour School District would receive $6,186.74 in that fiscal year, a $1,550.62 increase over the previous year.

See below to understand what this means for other homes in the district:

To see how this plays out over the next 20 years, the amount of time property tax payers would see a rate increase from the Mahomet-Seymour School District in order to pay for the $112.8 million referendum, we have put together a table that includes an array of home assessed values (about one-third of the market value).

The table looks at 20 years of assessed value increases, accounting for a $6000 homestead exemption, with 10-percent in the 2024 value and a very conservative 2.6-percent in each subsequent year. While assessed values cannot continue at 10-percent forever, 2022, 2023 and projected 2024 are 5.79-percent, 8.5-percent and 10-percent, showing that the assessments could be higher moving forward, but 2.6-percent is a base at which is reasonable.

Over the lifetime of the referendum, homeowners could expect substantial increases. For instance, a home with an assessed value of:

$50,000 (about $150,000 in market value) could see a 20 year total tax increase of over $14,104.
$70,000 (about $210,000 in market value) could see a 20 year total tax increase of over $19,746.
$80,000 (about $240,000 in market value) could see a 20 year total tax increase of over $22,567.
$100,000 (about $300,000 in market value) could see a 20 year total tax increase of over $28,208.
$150,000 ( about $450,000 in market value) could see a 20 year total tax increase of over $42,313.