Berrien County will have a little more in its coffers this year than previously expected thanks to an error discovered by Equalization Director Warren Parrish.
The Berrien County Board of Commissioners was told this week that a tax collection rollback that was previously expected this year will, in fact, not be necessary. It was a Headlee rollback, as required under the Michigan Constitution. Berrien County Administrator Brian Dissette tells us Parrish did some digging and learned the county won’t need one.
“Over the last two weeks, Warren has spent a significant amount of time looking through all of the local collection amounts, all of the local assessments, and he was able to determine through a ton of work that the proposed rollback would not be necessary,” Dissette said.
Dissette said this means the county won’t be losing about $300,000 it was expected to lose this year.
“By confirming that no rollback was necessary, that then confirms that we were operating within the Headlee rules and that we were collecting the appropriate amount for the year.”
Dissette commended Parrish for his hard work at the commissioners meeting, saying you could line up dozens of assessors and they probably wouldn’t catch the mistake that Parrish caught. He called the director’s work “so solid.”
The Headlee Amendments are tax rules added to the Michigan Constitution in 1978. They state that if a tax base of a local unit of government is broadened, then the tax rate on that base must be proportionally reduced so that property tax revenues can increase no more than the rate of inflation for that year. That’s referred to as a Headlee rollback. That is, if the county’s taxable value goes up, then the millage rate generally must be reduced.
