Platte County voters could soon cap property taxes — if measure holds up in court
Platte County voters will have their say next week on a ballot measure intended to cap how much property taxes can increase each year for homeowners. But even with voter approval, the future of the tax relief program is uncertain as lawsuits against it make their way through the courts.
Voters in Platte County will vote on the Homestead Property Tax Credit Program, which would limit qualifying residential property tax bills from increasing by more than 5% annually, during Tuesday’s municipal election.
The relief would come through a new program Missouri lawmakers created and passed last year as part of the state law offering incentives for new to build professional sports stadiums. The tax credit program allows qualifying counties to vote on capping annual property tax increases for residents.
A 5% annual cap is proposed in 75 counties, including Platte. Another 22 counties will have an opportunity to vote for no year-to-year property tax increases. The remaining 17 counties, including Jackson and Clay counties, and the city of St. Louis, were excluded from the program.
The polls are open from 6 a.m to 7 p.m. on Tuesday. Voters can find more information about how to vote and see what else will be on their ballots by visiting the Missouri Secretary of State’s website.
Prevent big spikes
Property taxes and home valuations have been a hot topic in Platte County for some time, especially in the last year or so.
Last summer, Platte County officials spent weeks in negotiations with the Missouri State Tax Commission after the state called out the county for undervaluing its properties and ordered a 15% increase to residential property valuations across the board.
At the time, state officials alleged that Platte County had been low-balling assessments for years. Missouri law requires counties to assess the value of a property as close to its market value as possible, so that it can be taxed based on a value similar to what it could be sold for.
Negotiations between the county and the state eventually brought homeowners’ value increase down to around 7% instead of 15%.
County Commissioner Joe Vanover, who supports the proposed cap on tax increases, said the Homestead Property Tax Credit Program is one step toward preventing “massive spikes” in tax bills.
“The Homestead Property Tax Credit is one piece of the effort to prevent shocks to your property tax bill, and if it’s implemented, it will help some,” Vanover said. “It’s not a perfect solution for all problems, but it’s a step in the right direction.”
Vanover said he doesn’t expect the program to have a dramatic impact on residents, since property taxes don’t typically go up by more than 5% in a normal year in Platte County, with last year as an exception because of the state order, he said.
A Star analysis of Platte County property data last year showed that from 2019 to 2025, home assessment values increased by about 5% each year, which was slightly under market value, which increased about 6% per year on average.
Vanover said he anticipates the tax program will have little impact on the county’s budget in future years. That’s because the county’s tax levy is the lowest it’s been in over a decade.
School budgets
But what a cap on property tax increases could mean for area schools and other taxing districts that rely more heavily on property taxes is less clear.
The proposed homestead program comes on the heels of another state-approved property tax relief program that Missouri counties started rolling out last year, which in effect freezes property taxes for homeowners 62 and over.
Leaders of Park Hill schools said the senior tax freeze led to a $1 million hit to the district’s budget.
Kelly Wachel, the district’s chief communications officer, told The Star that Park Hill is unsure what a second, broader limit to property tax revenue could mean for their schools if approved by voters.
“The voter’s voice is really important to us, and so we’d have to see what the voters say. And then once that happens, we would have a better idea of how we want to move forward with our budgeting,” Wachel told The Star in January. “When any tweaks are made, or any adjustments are made to property tax formulas or assessed valuation formulas, all of those impact us downstream.”
Last summer, Park Hill preemptively deferred purchasing student laptops to the 2026-27 budget in anticipation of a potential revenue loss from the senior tax credit program.
Now, the district is waiting to see what voters decide on Tuesday before figuring out what it means for their upcoming budget for the 2026-27 school year.
Questions linger
Tara Bennett, a Parkville resident, said her concerns with the proposed homestead program lie in the lack of available information regarding its budgetary impact.
“I don’t have a problem at all with the idea of the tax cap, but I do have a problem with the fact that there’s been no analysis about what this is going to do to projected budgets and how big the holes in the budgets are going to be,” she said.
On Tuesday, Bennett plans to vote against the program.
“I wouldn’t take a job that pays less until I’d run my budget numbers. And that’s basically what they’re asking us to do,” she said.
In Parkville, Mayor Dean Katerndahl said he hasn’t heard much chatter from concerned residents about the tax relief program, and he isn’t aware of a campaign for or against it.
“It hasn’t gotten much play locally,” he said. “This hasn’t drawn much attention at all.”
Katerndahl said he doesn’t have an official stance on the measure but that he expects voters to approve the cap on Tuesday.
“My guess is it’ll pass because it’s at least viewed as some kind of limit on taxation to some degree. But I don’t think anybody’s super clear on its actual impact and how it’ll work,” he said.
Looming lawsuit
Part of that confusion is because the program itself is currently being challenged in court.
Several counties and school districts in Missouri have sued over the law that established the relief program, claiming it “destabilizes local funding, threaten(s) essential services and undermines the will of the local voter.”
The lawsuit claims that Missouri lawmakers used no rational basis to categorize which counties qualified for a 5% cap, a freeze or neither.
“It was simply the whim of individual legislators,” the lawsuit states.
Platte County Commissioner Allyson Berberich said the lawsuit is why the county commission hasn’t “gone into a lot of detail” about how it would go about implementing the tax cap.
Placing the Homestead Property Tax Credit Program on next week’s ballot was “essentially a requirement” of the law that created the program, she said.
“We definitely understand that there’s the chance that this could all be peeled back, even if we all vote ‘yes’ on it,” Berberich said during a candidate forum in March. “If the lawsuit determines that this is unlawful or unconstitutional, it might just, poof, go away.”
Vanover said the county will begin implementing it immediately, if approved by voters, and will continue to do so until a verdict is reached on the lawsuit.
“As long as voters approve it on Tuesday and it doesn’t get struck down, and the legislature and Governor don’t change it, we’re pushing ahead on implementing it,” Vanover said.
This story was originally published April 4, 2026 at 5:54 AM.
