Another downward force on the levy could be declining investment in industrial plant and equipment. These properties go on the tax rolls with a taxable assessed value = real market value. Equipment depreciates over time, and that causes a drop in assessed value. This is usually offset by investment in new equipment. However, if industrial taxpayers slow down or stop altogether their investments, it would cause a drop in the levy for that class of taxpayers. Is that what's going on? I don't know, just a hunch.

I suspect the real explanation may be contained in the City's general fund forecast, available here:
http://www.portlandonline.com/omf/index.cfm?c=26788&
I don't have time to sift through it at the moment.

Jack,

To answer the fellow who keeps asking why debt is bad. If you look at page 93 of the City Budget overview.

http://www.portlandonline.com/shared/cfm/image.cfm?id=163126

You can see how the city is doing things that led to all these folks losing their homes in the sub-prime market.

Some examples from Table 15 for your favorites.

Upside down loan paying $4.85 million interest with no principal buy down on the loan in SoWhat

Convention Center $1.8 principal vs $5.4 in interest, so that loan payment is not covering the mortgage, not to mention the asset is depreciating.

Pension bonds $4.76million principal vs $18.65 million interest so we are not paying off this bond either it is growing.

This is how the subprime mortgage market works, it is building things when the cashflow does not allow for a payback, so it keeps rolling over deeper in debt.

My answer to your fellow on how much debt is enough if Seattle has the same debt per capita, would be what my parents always told me, If Johnny jumped off the edge of a cliff does that mean you are going to as well. We have to decide if we are lemmings.

As I calculated in the previous string. The municipal debt per capita has exploded since the 60's relative to median income, or the taxpayers ability to pay it back. That is probably why this "upside down" loan is so popular here in Portland.

http://www.oregonlive.com/business/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/business/1184124311262450.xml&coll=7

http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/stories/2007/07/09/daily21.html?f=et

An example of what Frank was talking about.

A quote from the article.

In Canby, American Steel expects to pay about $16 for every $1,000 of assessed property value, about 25 percent less than the company pays on its $20 million in assets in Portland.

Folks can take it from there as to what the trend is.

For the math impaired that is $400,000 in revenue.

Jack,
Not sure if this could be the difference in the last two figures but my property tax bill went down in 06 from 05. Reason being was a levy that expired. Was about $400 dollars in savings for us.

If Adams' transportation "maintenance" fee passes, what are the odds the city capitalizes the new revenue in the form of new debt issuance? Also, the city not too long ago reformed the business tax. So, I don't know if this will impact future total tax levy revenue or not. Also, freightliner is not doing so well in its Portland location. Then too the city and its Port authority are said to be eyeing taking over vacant superfund sites. Finally, I guess if you are a downtown resident you probably like the spending going on in building up and extending the downtown mall. But for me, living in a surrounding neighborhood, it doesn't do much for me except make me think about moving to the suburbs or exurbia when I retire in a few years.

Any chance the decrease could be an accounting year issue? The % collected is down also and maybe they generated this report prior to getting all the final numbers.

I'd kind of be more interested in what happened in 2003-2004 to give them a 15% bump.

I think that the debt for the Big Pipe is being serviced through rate increases, not property taxes. Your tax bill might go down, but your sewer bill will be close to $100/month (that's per month, not quarter as with the current bill) by the time the project is done sometime around 2011.

Is there still time for me to sell my house and move out of Portland?

I thought the levy that expired was a schools levy.