Greene reassessment hitting few snags
WAYNESBURG – With 16,000 letters sent to property owners throughout Greene County, the county’s chief assessor said his office has received relatively few responses requiring mostly minor corrections to property information. H. John Frazier said the office has gotten about 1,300 responses from residential and agricultural property owners wishing to make corrections to information that the assessment office gathered for the countywide property reassessment.
The new information and property values will go into effect beginning with the 2003 tax year.
Frazier said most of the corrections have been minor, such as changing the number of bedrooms or bathrooms in a home.
He said officials will be on hand at the assessment office and at the 4-H building at the county fairgrounds Tuesday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. until April 18 to meet with people and make any corrections to their property information.
Preliminary value information will be mailed to property owners in early May after the county Board of Assessment Appeals reviews the form and makes any additional comments, Frazier said.
The county commissioners are still debating whether to sit on the board during a summer expected to be full of appeals to the new 2003 assessed values.
The commissioners are faced with serving on the board or appointing three people to listen to the appeals, a process Frazier estimates could take as long as 16 weeks.
Commissioner Farley Toothman said he is inclined to resign from the appeals board so the commissioners will be able to handle the county’s business and not be bogged down in four months of non-stop appeals.
“We have to figure out how to manage an $18 million budget and several hundred employees in addition to the appeals work,” he said. “I just don’t think we can do both.”
Frazier suggested the commissioners keep discussing the matter, but at least remain on the appeals board until after April 25, when a day of appeals on the 2002 tax year values will be heard. Included in those appeals will be one on property owned by Toothman, who will represent himself in that case.
The commissioners may make a decision about the board’s composition when they reconvene the assessment appeals board meeting April 25 at 8:45 a.m. before they begin hearing appeals.
Finally, Frazier said that coal values for the assessment are finally back, along with predictions about how long coal will continue to be a tax revenue source for Greene County. He suggested a meeting with commissioners, municipal leaders and school board directors to discuss the coal values for 2003 and the future of coal in the county.
He said that meeting – or a series of meetings on the topic – will be scheduled and announced later.