For those that are not aware of it, St. Louis County property appraisals have been done and are available on-line. You can find your assessment at:
http://revenue.stlouisco.com/ias/. It includes appraised and assessed value with comparison to last year. This way you can see if your valuation is going up or down and by how much. Also there are links to Comparable Sales and other sales in the area. You should look carefully at this data.
There are two components to your property tax. One is the assessed value of your home and the other is the tax rate per $100 valuation of your home. Last year the tax rate was $6.9808 per $100 valuation of your property. To calculate your tax, take your assessed value, divide by 100 and multiply by the tax rate. If your assessed value was $45,370, you would calculate $45,370/100= 453.7 X 6.9809 = $3,167.20 tax. Unfortunately, the county has not calculated the tax rate yet and while you do not have a lot of control over the tax rate, there are ways for you to control your assessed value.