The other day, as part of our examination of the City of Portland's financial health, we noted that the city's tax levy apparently declined slightly last year (2006-2007) below what it was the year before (2005-2006). Now that the current year's tax roll (2007-2008) has been published by the county, we thought we'd try to see in which direction the city's levy is moving this year, and by how much.

It looks as though it's going up. Adding up six "categories of City of Portland" tax levy in the county's new figures, we come up with a grand total of property taxes this coming year of $378,265,819.40, which would be about a 4.2 percent increase over the $363,073,000 shown in the city's recent bond offering document as the tax levy for last year.

Over the past seven years (including last year's down year), the city's tax levy had grown at a compound rate of about 5.01 percent a year. And so this coming year's increase, while notable, is still less on a percentage basis than it's been over the medium-term past. Keep in mind that over the last seven years, the city's long-term debt has risen at the compound rate of 6.66 percent per year, and so property tax growth still lags well behind growth in long-term liabilities.

If I've got my math right (and since the city and mainstream media are studiously avoiding me, I can only hope), the city's long-term debt of $4.4 billion is roughly 11.7 times the coming year's property tax levy. In other words, you could take every single penny of the city's property tax levy this year, and take that same amount annually for more than another decade, and it wouldn't pay off even the principal on the city's existing long-term liabilities, much less principal and interest. That money's all been spent.

For the record, the six categories of Portland property taxes that we added up to get to our $378.3 million total were labeled as follows by the county: City of Portland; City of Portland Children's Local Opt.; City of Portland Parks Local Opt. and (related) Bonds; and Urban Renewal - Portland and (related) Bonds (the last category being zero). If the city levy includes something else, I hope savvy readers will let me know.

Although our property tax bill typically breaks out separate lines called "City of Portland - Bonds" and "Portland Police/Fire Pension," the county spreadsheet does not do so. I assume that those two are somehow subsumed into one or more of the six categories I have found. Please let me hear about it if I've got it screwed up.