Why Franklin Failed
My friends at the Indy Star this morning are writing about this week’s local school referendums and conclude the mixed results don’t offer a clear trend.
Franklin and Perry Townships’ referendums failed while Beech Grove’s passed. I too was somewhat puzzled at the results until I spent some time visiting with residents from the Southern portion of Marion County.
There were a couple factors at play in Franklin Township. First, residents had already felt they’d been burned on property taxes, as Franklin Township is mostly residential property and has never had the commercial base to absorb the property tax burden. Second, the school district’s marketing campaign backfired. Although state law allowed Franklin Township to use school resources to push for the referendum, all it did was infuriate the residents even more so.
Beech Grove’s referendum passed, in part, because Beech Grove schools have a high percentage of renters. And although renters pay property taxes through their rent, they don’t get a direct bill. Thus it was the renters that put Beech Grove over the top.
As far as Perry goes, I would not be surprised if that one is subject to a possible recount. The referendum failed by 174 votes, 3851-4025, that’s about two percent. But since the votes were hand counted, there may be enough discrepancies in the tally for officials to give it another go round.
It will be interesting to see what happens next week in Hamilton Southeastern Schools. Fundamentally it will boil down to how much goodwill the school district has built in the community. I’ll be watching.
November 5th, 2009 at 7:32 am
I don't know where you're geting your information, but:
Franklin has sufficient commercial property to support their schools properly. Not as much as other townships, but they're not commercial-property-poor.
Franklin probably lost because their school admin and board have been typical of their counterparts statewide–arrogant and overly in the lap of the Superintendent. They overbuilt an athletic complex about 5-6 years ago. Folks remember that kind of arrogance.
And Beech Grove's renter comment was completely wrong. I'll bet they have fewer renters per capita than Broad Ripple (Washington Twp./IPS).
Can we get away from this assumption that renters are unaware their rent goes to property taxes, too? It's a little haughty. Tenants are aware their rent goes to support capital costs, taxes, insurance and general profits. Two solid Supreme Court rulings have affirmed that fact.
November 5th, 2009 at 8:24 am
TA,
I'll have to respectfully disagree with you. I did my homework and talked with the people in the district. I stand by my story. I invite differing opinions and yours is always welcome.
November 5th, 2009 at 8:48 am
I am in the position today of agreeing with everything Abdul says. This may be a first and probably a last!!! First, the chaos and the board and administrative arguments in Perry has left a bitter taste in many people's minds. The stadium in Franklin still resonates as a horrible waste of taxpaper money and was often cited as a reason to change the law requiring referenda for school systems. While renters may intellectually know that some of the tax increase may be passed on in this poor economy that is the not the same as receiving that bill in the mail and having to pay several hundred dollars in 3 weeks. The truth is in this economy most landlords are going to have to eat the tax increase anyway. Now is not the time to increase rents.
November 5th, 2009 at 9:35 am
Some comments on Beech Grove's demographics.
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Disclaimer: The US Census site was unavailable, so the following information could be as old as 2003.
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The raw percentages for owner versus rental occupancy in Beech Grove is roughly 60-40.
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That 40% is higher than the Indiana average of 29% (I couldn't say regarding Broad Ripple's average).
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The data doesn't differentiate, but I would assume that there are more owners without school age children than renters (based only on my own superficial familiarity with Beech Grove). This is likely the key piece of information Abdul is using.
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Compared to all of the other Marion County townships, Franklin has a big gap in commericial properties that might pay property taxes. That has long been intentional, so no sympathy there from me. It's beginning to change, but they are still way behind the other townships.
November 5th, 2009 at 9:39 am
Fact Checker is right–I'm a landlord, and if I've got good tenants, I'm going to do everything I can to keep them. He's also right about Perry…that whole dismissal of the Superintendent and the board's resposne was a difficult situation. Nobody won.
Abdul, we can differ about issues, but the Beech grove rental ratio comment is just not accurate. That town has been a neatl clean tight-knit clean bungalow community for 60 years. Much more owner-occupied than rental. That's speaaing about single-family homes…not apartments. There may be a couple of large apt. complexes that are within the city limits by a short distance, but the overwhelming majority of single-family homes are owner-occupied.
November 5th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Think Again I don't know where you get your information but yes, Franklin Township is commercial/industrial poor. The less commercial the higher the taxes, the higher the taxes the less commercial. Why do you think Mayor Peterson approved abatements on spec commercial buildings? The hope was to kick start commercial development.
November 5th, 2009 at 11:48 am
X-assessor, I'm in the business…there are almost no commercial abatements left on the books in Franklin. There weren't that many to begin with. I will tell you this:
Of the assessed commercial properties I deal with in Franklin and Perry, 80% were assessed incorrectly at the outset. In some cases, wildly incorrect. As in: incompetent. I don't mean to indict all township assessors and their staffs, because some were delightful, but: my experience tells me their training was largely inadequate to keep up with the commercial market nowadays. Those assessors' data is used in more than compilation of taxes. Appraisers use the numbers to build their assessment files on a particular property, so it's very important. The inconsistencies among Marion's nine townships in this regard, was so ridiculous it was alarming. And the best one was only mildly adequate. National lenders scoffed at the incomptency. My sampling is random and may not represent true practices.
By the way, this is still true today: township or county assessors who are not independently licensed by the profession, can get “trianing” from their state associations, that amounts to little more than 4-5 days of classroom experience. Which is helpful but not one-100th of the training they need. Think: letting a Red Cross First Aid certified person treat you in an ER for a moderate injury.
Your recitation about commercial being higher, residential paying less, is exactly what I used to hear in township assessors' offices. It completely ignores market forces. It also ignores history….people don't like to hear this, but, for over two decades, commercial properties in this county paid more than their fair share as a ratio of comm/residential. Way more. The shift in ratio is one of the big reasons some pockets of Marion County got huge residential increases a couple of years ago…commercial's overall share dipped 3-5 points, and that had to be picked up somewhere.
To be fair, commercial properties can pass along their property tax increases to the end-users quicker than residential can absorb it. But it was badly out-of-whack for a long time.
And from the true commercial lending perspective, there's been almost no real spec commercial building in the metro area in 5-6 years. Indianapolis has escaped the huge spec commercial bust evident in so many other metro markets, and entire states like Texas, Florida, California, the Carolinas…
November 5th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Why would a thinking person describe what occured there as a failure? In contrast to Wishard, which group of folks appeared to act as Gadarenes? I think the buffalo considered Illinois to be dung over country so you might not be familiar with the old buffalo jump? The main thing about Wishard was its corrupt indecency fueled by lies of omission and brainless commentators unaware that the main struggle of the intelligent is against stupidity. While in Indianapolis it seems to be a losing cause, it is not a struggle that can be given up. The Franklin Community didn't lose anything. If anything they gained.
November 5th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Gov. Mitch Daniels is where Franklin Township went wrong. He is the one that pushed the property tax caps through and forced a referendum vote. Can you say Proposition 13 (see California)?
As for commercial/industrial taxes, yes there are not that many. And lets keep it that way. Take a look at Warren, Pike and Lawrence Township and how trashy they are as a result of needless commercial/industrial growth.
November 5th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
I live in Franklin Twp. and have kids in the school system there.
A. The Stadium everyone gripes about ALSO INCLUDED other building initiatives – it isn't just about the Stadium costing $4 million.
B. There needs to be a better method of getting facts to the voters. Receiving facts from the School Corp is like taking advice from a car salesman. They might be selling you a car at a fair price, but how are you to tell. General Fund, Rainy Day Fund, Transportation Fund, School Levy Replacement Fund, can take money from here but not from there, 2 referendum questions worded exactly the same … just different percentages, state funding per student in xxxx year, but in yyyy year that will adjust because the MNO tax will kick in, but it is capped at nn% for the first B years, so you need to take that into consideration.
We are common, hard-working folks – fighting for our kids, striving to keep our jobs, trapped between aging, ailing parents and teeagers wanting to drive … SOMEONE needs to figure out a better way of delivering information to the voter.
The voter MUST assume some responsibility to consume it – but I think by anyones standard – this did not occur in Franklin Twp. and now were faced with the Superintendent's AXE in one hand and the FAILED REFERENDUM VOTE as his authorization to CUT, CUT, CUT in the other.
November 5th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
Sir, Franklin Township was correctly assessed, both residential and commercial/industrial. That is it was until the 06 reassessment was contracted out. Apparently you don't understand the concept that the less commercial and industrial properties in a township the more taxes homeowners will pay. I didn't say “commercial being higher” I said “less commercial” there's a big difference.
There was at least one spec building built in Franklin Township thanks to Mayor Peterson's abatement program that allowed spec buildings to be built on several different parcels of land in appropiate areas.
November 6th, 2009 at 3:33 am
Anxious is right, and your SUper isn't the brightest bulb in the lamp.
He now has a voter-authorized budget cutting axe in his hand. It won't be pretty.
But a quick check of facts determines that your “stadium project” cost, with fees and carrying costs, over $8.9 million. I don't know what else was included in that project, but it was expensive. And unneeded.
Xassessor, keep dreaming about the assessments being right. Whatever. At least we now have assessments in the hands of one countywide elected official. It's not where it needs to be yet–but it's a damned sight better than it was before.
November 6th, 2009 at 5:33 am
Why Franklin Failed? I would say Franklin and Perry was a success. Its about time they asked the people that live in the community for thier opinion. After all its thier property that is used as colateral. Assessments are never acurate! Aguessors do the best they can with resources available to them, but without visiting each and every property, how acurate can you be? I like hospitals, schools and services, but my home is kind of important too.
November 6th, 2009 at 9:33 am
Anxious is right, and your SUper isn't the brightest bulb in the lamp.
He now has a voter-authorized budget cutting axe in his hand. It won't be pretty.
But a quick check of facts determines that your “stadium project” cost, with fees and carrying costs, over $8.9 million. I don't know what else was included in that project, but it was expensive. And unneeded.
Xassessor, keep dreaming about the assessments being right. Whatever. At least we now have assessments in the hands of one countywide elected official. It's not where it needs to be yet–but it's a damned sight better than it was before.
November 6th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Why Franklin Failed? I would say Franklin and Perry was a success. Its about time they asked the people that live in the community for thier opinion. After all its thier property that is used as colateral. Assessments are never acurate! Aguessors do the best they can with resources available to them, but without visiting each and every property, how acurate can you be? I like hospitals, schools and services, but my home is kind of important too.