Kingsport Spirit

As a former city manager, I know the pressure to provide the highest possible service at the lowest possible cost. Each year staff and board members agonize to cut corners, stretch dollars, and provide value. If you’ve always lived here (like me), you may not realize just how relatively valuable that fiscal conservatism is to the taxpayer.

Kingsport’s current property tax is $1.99/$100 of assessed value. A couple of things you need to know. (1) Assessed value is 1/4 of appraised value, which usually substantially less than their actual market value; and (2) Many states report tax rates in thousandths (if that were the case, ours would be $0.199 instead of $1.99). That throws people off who assume our tax rate is outrageous when in fact it’s just the opposite.

In my part-time work with MoveToKingsport.com, I am constantly comparing us to other cities. Our situation is extremely rare (in a good way). We receive top ratings for services, but at a much lower cost to the citizen. This saves the average taxpayer thousands of dollars each year and increases the value proposition of living here. Don’t get me wrong, there are cheaper places to live, but their schools, safety, and quality of life don’t compare favorably to ours. In many cases, they actually pay higher taxes for lower quality than we already enjoy! I hear it often from newcomers moving from other states where they feel that government spending is out of control and they’re so appreciative of Tennessee.

I thought it might be interesting to compare our current $1.99 property tax rate to historical rates published in the newspaper. Our population now surpasses 55,000 and we provide more services than ever before–arts, culture, Bays Mountain Park, Greenbelt, Senior Center, and more–but our tax rate is lower than it was a hundred years ago in 1923! Here are clips from the 1920s through 1991.

Suffice it to say, if you move to Kingsport, you’ll enjoy a long legacy of fiscally conservative government. The track record speaks for itself.