It seems there’s never enough money, said Robert Veale Thursday as he entered the check amount for his property taxes into his bankbook.

“And still everybody always wants more,” he added, shaking his head as he left the treasurer’s office in the Daviess County Courthouse. Veale paid his property taxes nearly a week before the Wednesday deadline for paying the spring installment of his annual bill.

That’s one reason, he mused, the whole property tax issue tends to frustrate those who have to pay them.

“Because if they want a raise, they just vote themselves one,” he said, nodding toward the county employees working under Treasurer Joyce Goodwin behind the “ready to pay” or “problems and questions” windows where tax payments can be made in person.

That isn’t exactly true, said Kenny Solliday, president of the Daviess County Council, the fiscal agent for local government.

“People don’t realize that only 20 to 25 cents of every dollar they pay in property taxes goes to run the county,” he explained. “People always ask me, too, why they pay so much and their roads aren’t fixed. They just don’t know that property taxes don’t pay for roads.”

In Indiana, there are three main methods for raising money to pay for local government services and operations. There’s the motor vehicle excise tax, local option income taxes, both of which are paid in Daviess County, and property taxes.

Road money comes from the gasoline tax that’s collected by the state and distributed back to county highway departments. But more than any other method, property taxes account for most of the revenue collected and utilized by local governments. And that raises another fact most taxpayers don’t know, Solliday continued.

“A good two-thirds — at least in this county — or 65 to 75 percent of all property taxes goes to support the schools,” he said. “If that weren’t so high, taxes wouldn’t be so high.”

While that number varies depending on which school district taxpayers live in, school dependence on property taxes has become a much debated issue at the local and state levels, agreed Ind. Rep. Dave Crooks, D-Washington.

“I’m a strong believer we need to depend less on property taxes and find school funding elsewhere — anywhere from sales to income tax,” he continued. “But it would have to be an increase that would be revenue neutral, meaning that how ever much we raise, we have to cut in property taxes so we don’t add taxes and don’t use toward any new spending.”

But it’s unrealistic to expect property taxes to go away forever, Crooks explained.

“They’re just too dependable a way to collect revenue for local government,” he said.

That collection is the highest for property taxpayers in the city of Washington, whose $4.17 per $100 of assessed valuation tax rate is the highest not only in all of Daviess County, but also compared to neighboring cities of similar size and demographics. That’s up from $3.72 last year, while in Princeton, taxpayers are paying $3.89 per $100 of a property’s assessed valuation.

The schools carry the highest total tax rate of all the services and agencies that receive tax dollars within the city limits. And city property owners pay tax rates for the county, as well.

“Property taxes pay for fire stations and firefighters, police, schools and county government,” explained Eaton to a class of Barr-Reeve fifth-graders Thursday. “They also pay for libraries and the parks.”

So it’s how much money those particular organizations need that determines just how high taxes will go — within reason, that is.

“It depends on the budgets and what it takes to raise the money,” said Jo Ann McCracken, county auditor. “We go through the council process, where they can cut things out of budgets, and then see how much it will take.”

Then, however, the state must approve the budget and make sure the county and its individual taxing “units” — the public service agencies paid for by taxes — aren’t asking for too much. If they are, the state Department of Local Government Finance will tell the county cuts must be made in the budget.

That’s what happened to Martin County last fall, when the state realized the county couldn’t bring in enough revenue to cover all the costs it had budgeted.

Told to cut over a million dollars from already tight budgets, each county office, including the extension office, the historic society, the sheriff’s department and all county government offices, had to cut every paper clip and pencil they could. Only then did the state approve the budget for the county.

A similar scenario faced Daviess County a few years ago when 2004 legislation was passed, capping tax levies — the total amount of money raised by property taxes — at 2003 levels. That hurt counties like Daviess, which hadn’t come close to reaching the maximum amount it could levy as some counties had. So the county’s frozen levy was lower than expected, forcing the council to trim a million and a half dollars from the budget.

Unlike Martin County, however, there was plenty to cut that didn’t make money so tight the county couldn’t breathe, said Solliday.

Last August, the council didn’t have to struggle quite so hard to keep both budgets and tax rates reasonable, though Solliday said his primary purpose as a councilman is to keep those rates as low as they’ll go.

“I liked the idea of being on the council because it’s about taking care of the taxpayer,” Solliday explained. “We spend as if it’s our own money, and we don’t want to waste it. So our job is to keep taxes low while still getting the services we depend on.”

Of course, taxpayers who want to know what they’re paying can just look at their tax bills, because most list the places the tax money supports and by what percentage. In Washington, the total tax rate for the schools is $1.61 while the total rate for all city and town services equals $1.38. Odon taxpayers will this year pay the fourth-highest rate at $3.17 per $100 of assessed property value. But Elnora’s rate is higher at $3.35, making them second-highest next to Washington.

Still, it could be worse — if you live in Bicknell, that is. There, property taxpayers in Washington Township face a $4.15 tax rate this year, up from the $3.92 they paid last year.

Vincennes taxpayers paid less with a 2006 rate of $3.67 and $3.38 in two districts, compared to $3.31 and $3.13 a year ago.

For more information or to find out exact tax rates by district, type “Indiana Department of Local Government Finance” into an Internet search.