Wellesville must meet a budget of $27,000. All of the city's income is derived from property tax. What rate of tax must they use if the assessed value of the taxable property is $1,173,913? (Answer to tenths)

The total taxable value of the homes is 1,173,913. We are asked to find what percentage of this amount gives us 27,000 which is the amount Wellesville is looking to obtain.

We can represent the ratio between the taxes the "city" wants to collect and the total amount they can draw from as [tex] \frac{27000}{1173913}=.023 [/tex] Recall that a ratio is a comparison by division and a fraction bar represents division.

As we wish to express this number as a percent we move the decimal place to the right two spaces to obtain 2.3%

If you need help figuring out why moving the decimal to the right two spaces gives you a percentage, let's think about what "percent" means. It mean "per" (out of or for every) cent (100 --> think century). So a percent means "out of 100"

In our case we have [tex] \frac{.023}{1}= \frac{2.3}{100} [/tex]. That is, each number on the fraction at left gets multiplied by 100 to get the fraction on the right. Since this one is 2.3 over 100 it means "2.3 out of 100" which is 2.3%