Here's the thing about assessed values and taxes, at least where I live:

The absolute value of the assessment of your house doesn't directly affect your property taxes. The relative value of the assessment of your house, compared to everyone else in your local area, is what matters.

Here's how it works, at least in my town in MA. I know we're a little odd with our town meetings and whatnot, but this isn't that complex:

1. Annual budget is calculated

2. Total assessed value of residential, commercial, and industrial property is calculated.

3. (1) / (2) is calculated as the property tax rate, typically around $10 of tax per $1000 of value around here (we use the same rate for residential and commercial property, but it only complicates the math a bit if you use different rates).

So what really matters, ultimately, is what percent of the value of the property in town that the town thinks I own, and what the town budget is. I've had years where my assessed value rose, but my taxes went down because my increase was below average, and the town budget didn't rise much.

Local governments control the timing of (1) and (2) above. Unless they are grossly incompetent, they will not have budget shortfalls or surpluses purely due to gyrations in the real estate market (unless there are enough foreclosures that people aren't paying taxes due).

Are there local governments out there whose revenue is actually based directly on assessed values (this would be the case if the tax rate was held fixed over time)? If so, I say sack the finance department. They are grossly incompetent. The assessor department's function is to figure out how to distribute the tax burden, not to determine total tax revenue.

Doing more rapid assessed value updates does address fairness- if you don't update assessments, and one part of town gets hot while another loses value for whatever reason, the people in the latter part will get screwed. But the differences in real estate value trends within a locally tax entity usually aren't that huge. I was surprised to learn recently that my sister-in-law's town in NJ, and my in-law's town in PA apparently haven't been updated in years- they are both assessed at less than half the value of their property. If, and it's a big if, the relative values of properties haven't changed much, then updating all these assessments wouldn't change anyone's taxes much.

I keep hearing complaints in threads like this about tax revenues and assessed values. Either people tend to municipal governments out there that don't know how to administer a property tax correctly.

As mentioned above, the issue here shouldn't be total tax revenue, it's who pays the taxes.

If the foreclosed properties are de-valued, then, if your local municipal government is sane, the overall tax rate would increase, and those whose assessed values stayed constant would see higher taxes.

Which maybe explains my puzzle- maybe many muni governments keep constant tax rates in these situations so as to avoid a tax revolt from those whose taxes would rise due to the foreclosures of others? Or in good times, keep the tax rate constant to allow them to increase their budget?

In both cases, that's bad policy- a town/county should budget for the government they need, and raise that amount of revenue, and not let real estate trends run the show. But I guess I understand why it could happen like that.

sansho1: Ouch. But if the gov't didthe reassessment and then figures out the tax rate, revenues wouldn't change- just who pays it (and they'd be pissed, so the gov't's other alternative is either not doing a re-assessment, which hurts the speculator, or reassessing and not changing the tax rate, which would result in an unplanned revenue shortfall.

Cat vs. Roomba (love the name- I can picture the battles): A few questions: Your own taxes, or the municipality's taxes rose 75%? Why are they rising? If our town government raised the local budget by 75% in a year, we'd have a new town government next year; the current selectmen and town manager would be tarred and feathered. And we're pretty tolerant of tax increases in my town. Also, NC law requires assessments to be at full market value (http://www.charmeck.org/Departments/LUESA/Property+Assessment+and+Land+Records/Real+Estate/home.htm); what the hell is your assessor dept. doing? Our assessed values aren't perfect, but they are pretty darn good; actual sale prices tend to be within +/- 10% of the latest assessed value, which is frankly pretty good. Assessed values tended to lag sale values by ~30% in the early 2000's, but it was at least pretty consistent (and thus fair for taxation purposes). What county in NC are you in?

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I concur with other readers that even a pretty large LCD likely uses less energy than the CRT it may be replacing.

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Alden- Your quibble is right, the article should really say "bury carbon" sans the dioxide part. Charcoal is mostly C...

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Dirt sucks. Though my boys seem to like spreading it about our house quite a bit.