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Mariposa residents will have to pay four dollars more per $1,000 of their property’s value toward a public improvement district bond debt for the next year, officials announced at an emergency meeting at Rio Rancho City Hall this afternoon.
That will raise the tax rate from $9 to $13 per $1,000 for the next year.
Earlier this month, an agreement was in the works designed to spare residents of the troubled Mariposa community in far north Rio Rancho from a crippling tax increase.
Under the agreement, investors who hold the $16 million in public improvement district (PID) bonds sold to pay for infrastructure at Mariposa would agree to refrain from pursuing legal remedies, including demanding a tax increase within the next few months to cover the bond payments.
In the meeting today, the board of directors of the Mariposa Public Improvement District approved a one-year forbearance, with the $4 increase in the meantime.
One resident, John Knipps, said under the $4 increase, the PID taxes on his $429,000 house will increase from $1,000 to $1,200 per year.
A public improvement district is a mechanism that allows developers to sell bonds backed by taxes from property owners to pay for improvements like water systems and roads. When it sold the bonds in 2006, Mariposa developer High Desert Investment Corp. agreed to cover any tax revenue shortfall but the housing slump torpedoed its sales and revenue projections for the community.
In June, High Desert told property owners it was pulling out of the development and didn’t have the $1 million needed to cover the looming shortfall.
The news outraged property owners who felt betrayed and feared skyrocketing taxes. Without an agreement or the forbearance, they could have seen taxes jump to $110 per $1,000 of their property value.
