Skagit County · Office of the Assessor
Tax District Levy Trends
A public transparency tool from the Office of the Skagit County Assessor. See how the levy rate and the total dollars raised by every taxing district in Skagit County have changed over seventeen years, and the laws and local decisions behind each change. Select a single district to see its full story.
Start with a question
How to use this tool
- Pick what to measure at the top. Levy Rate is the price per $1,000 of value. Levied Amount is the total dollars a district collects. Assessed Value is the tax base itself.
- Pick a category, then check one or more districts. Select all compares a whole category at once. You can check and uncheck freely.
- Hover or tap the chart to see any year in detail, including how much it changed from the year before and from five years back. Diamonds mark years where something notable happened; tap one for the explanation and the source.
- On Levied Amount you can compare a district against inflation, population growth, or both together, or switch every year into 2026 dollars.
- Below the chart: the district’s story in plain language, a year by year timeline of what changed, and the full data table.
What these terms mean
- Taxing district
- A government service area with authority to collect property tax: the county, a city, a school district, a fire district, and so on. Most homes sit inside eight to ten overlapping districts, and a tax bill is the sum of all of them.
- Levied amount
- The total dollars a district collects from all property owners in a year.
- Levy rate
- The price per $1,000 of assessed value. A rate of $1.00 on a $400,000 home is $400 for the year. The rate is how a district’s total gets divided among properties.
- Assessed value
- The county’s estimate of what a property would sell for, updated every year.
- The 1 percent limit
- A district’s regular levy in dollars can grow only about 1 percent per year, plus what new construction adds, unless voters approve more. Rising values do not raise a district’s total. When values rise faster than 1 percent, rates fall.
- New construction
- New buildings add to a district’s total outside the 1 percent limit, so a district’s levied amount can grow without raising anyone’s existing bill.
- Major and junior districts
- Majors are the state school levy, local school districts, cities and towns, and county funds. Juniors are the smaller special purpose districts: fire, hospital, library, parks, cemetery, and port.
- Special assessments
- Flat charges for dike, drainage, and similar districts. They are set in dollars, not as a rate per $1,000, so they appear only under Levied Amount.
- Lid lift
- A voter approved increase that lets a district collect more than the 1 percent limit would allow, up to a legal maximum rate. Many run six years with a built in annual escalator.
- Banked capacity
- When a district levies less than the maximum allowed, it can save the difference and collect it in a later year without a new vote.
- Bond levy
- Voter approved debt for buildings and equipment, paid through a separate levy until the bond retires. Refinancing an existing bond at lower cost does not require a vote.
- EMS levy
- A voter approved levy for emergency medical services, often attached to a fire district.
- State school levy and McCleary
- The statewide school levy is set by the Legislature, not the county. After the Supreme Court’s McCleary decision it was restructured in 2018 into two parts. The State School Total in this tool shows the combined, continuous series so years before and after compare directly.
- Diamonds on the chart
- A diamond marks a year where something notable happened to that district. Tap or click it for the explanation and the source.
- 2026 dollars
- A toggle that adjusts past years for Seattle area inflation so amounts compare in today’s purchasing power.
- Inflation and population pace lines
- Optional dashed lines showing where a levy would be if it had grown only with inflation, only with population, or both together. Inflation plus population is the benchmark most often proposed as an alternative to the 1 percent limit.
- Why levies can outgrow the benchmarks
- The pace lines are context, not a verdict. Districts face real cost drivers beyond inflation and headcount: service model changes such as Sedro-Woolley’s shift from volunteer to full-time paid firefighters, rising call volumes, state and federal mandates, and insurance and construction costs that outpace the general CPI. A levy above the benchmark lines is not automatically waste, and one below them is not automatically virtue. The year by year explanations on each district tell the specific story.
Select districts