PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The City Council has set the fiscal year 2026 tax rate: $17.50 per $1,000 of valuation for residential property and $36.90 for commercial, industrial, and personal property. 

While the rates are 54 cents and more than a dollar less, respectively, than fiscal year 2025, bills will rise with property values. 

The average single home, valued at about $315,000, will increase by $220 per year, and the average commercial property $325 annually. This rate uses a residential factor of 0.8299 at a shift of 1.75 toward the commercial/industrial side. 

"We are at the highest we can. We cannot give residents any bigger break than we've been able to because we're at the highest, 1.75. We started last year at 1.75 and this year, so the last two years, we're at the highest," Ward 1 Councilor Kenneth Warren said. 

"There's nowhere to go. We can go down, but that would increase the tax bills for the residential." 

He said many focus on the tax rate, but they should really be looking at the city's levy and the valuation of their own home, explaining, "Even if the rate was cut in half, but your valuation went two times, we still have to raise the same amount of money." 

The FY26 levy limit of $119.5 million includes more than $2 million in tax revenue from new growth, and there is about $389,000 in excess level capacity. Pittsfield's real and personal property valuation is $5,650,879,534, more than $380 million higher than the previous year. 

The value of the average single-family home has increased by more than $20,000 from $295,291 last fiscal year to $315,335 in FY26, and with the proposed tax rate, will be assessed $5,518.36 in taxes per year. This represents a $220.84 increase.