Ada County considers increasing property taxes ‘just to keep the lights on’
Ada County commissioners are considering raising property taxes to balance the budget this year. However, even if the commissioners were to take the maximum amount, Clerk Trent Tripple said the median homeowner in Meridian (which has a median assessed value of $486,600) would see their taxes go up an estimated $30.
Ada County has tried in past years to not take additional property taxes, Tripple told county commissioners in a marathon multi-hour meeting this week. But this year isn’t the same. Keeping the county on the right path, Tripple said, will require money from property taxes or other sources “just to keep the lights on.”
For last few budget cycles, Ada County commissioners have chosen to take less than the maximum allowable property tax increase of 3% and haven’t taken any forgone taxes, according to budget documents. They’ve taken increases of 1.785% to 2.9%, with property tax revenue in fiscal year 2026 of $182 million.
“That’s one of our biggest struggles this year,” Commissioner Tom Dayley told the Statesman in a phone interview. “We have not taken where we could have taken...We have left that in the taxpayers’ pockets.”
Tripple’s comments come amid local and statewide discontent over property taxes. In recent years, Idaho home prices took off and cities have scrambled to pay for services to keep up with the growth. Just this week, Boise Mayor Lauren McLean backed off a plan to raise property taxes above 3%.
This year, Ada County commissioners are also confronting the impact of Idaho legislators slashing spending at the state level, which appears to be trickling down to local governments, as some lawmakers warned it would during the session.
For example, Ada County Juvenile Services Director Cody Ward told the commissioners he was asking for money to fund a new position because of state budget cuts.
“State budget woes with reduced revenue and budget cuts have had a direct impact on our county,” Tripple said.
But it isn’t just state budget cuts affecting the county.
The county’s share of liquor revenue dropped by several hundred thousand dollars, Tripple said, part of a plan executed at the end of the session to divert liquor revenue to state police to make up for straggling wages.
“We are a creature of the state government,” commissioner Rod Beck said during the June 10 meeting. “They actually control our revenues. And sometimes, they do things that’s just not quite understandable. Just that $2 million that they took off the top of liquor tax lowered our revenues by $276,000.”
The fiscal year 2026 budget was $389.1 million.
On top of that, the state limits how much property tax that governments can take, Beck said. “We have a tight box to try to fill everything in,” said Beck, a former state legislator.
Ada County has also carried $10 million in costs to house state inmates in recent years, Tripple said, and even though lawmakers this year tried to help, the new money coming in still doesn’t offset the total cost.
It’s not the first time Ada County commissioners have criticized the legislature while they work to figure out where the county’s money should go. Last year, commissioners explained during their budget hearings that the Legislature had placed so many requirements on local governments that there was not much commissioners could do to cut back.
Beck echoed that point this year, saying “if the Legislature would actually make some adjustments,” things would be different.
Criticizing the Legislature has become a common theme among local governments, such as Boise and Meridian, who have often complained that state lawmakers overreach and step on local control. In recent weeks, Meridian’s mayor and some city council members voiced frustrations, with one council member saying lawmakers seemed to be “trying to punish cities or hurt cities in some ways.”
“We have to live with what (the state) gives us,” Dayley said during Ada County’s budget hearings. “Property taxes increasingly are part of what we have to deal with ... We have to face a different scenario in terms of property tax and other sources of revenue because the state’s cutting it back, the feds are cutting it back”
The budget is not yet final. Commissioners have heard presentations from county officials and deliberations will continue through Wednesday, June 17, according to Tripple’s presentation. The tentative and final budgets will be adopted in August.
