The Columbia Heart Beat

All around Columbia and Boone County, prime parcels produce paltry property taxes.

On the corner of State Farm Parkway and Nifong Blvd, 0.6 acres owned by Crown Center Farms -- an operation of the Laurie family of Wal-Mart heirs -- produced just $2.51 in property taxes last year.

That's right -- two dollars and fifty one cents in property taxes on six-tenths of an acre. With the proposed Columbia Public Schools tax levy, that figure would have increased -- by eleven cents.

A Sapp-family owned 18.2 acres in Thornbrook with a completed cul-de-sac netted $50.86 in property taxes last year. County Assessor Tom Schauwecker's office has the parcel (in the upper right hand corner of this map near bottom of page) appraised at just $7,210.00 -- about $387.00/acre.

His office apparently calls the parcel agricultural.  The City of Columbia calls it residential.  Why the discrepancy exists is hard to say.

State Tax Commission law judge W.B. Tichenor told me that he can't decipher Schauwecker's shorthand for land use -- FV, FA, RV, RI, etc.  He spent about five minutes in his Jefferson City office asking around -- I heard the discussion over the phone!

"No one in here has ever seen this," said Tichenor, which is kind of scary because Tichenor routinely heard tax appeals from Boone County until recently.  "We don't know what it means."      

READ THE REST, DAMMIT!