Few seek meetings about reassessment
With two-thirds of Fayette County’s preliminary new assessment values mailed out, only 5.5 percent of property owners have requested informal meetings to discuss those numbers, a rate that’s half of what was projected. At Tuesday’s agenda meeting, chief assessor James A. Hercik, CPE, said the county originally estimated that 10 percent of property owners would ask for informal meetings with Cole Layer Trumble, the firm that performed the first countywide reassessment in 44 years.
“It is a much lower response than we anticipated,” said Hercik, who added that the public education component of the effort has “done well” and that the independent auditing of CLT’s work has ensured more accuracy.
However, Hercik noted that, “There’s some areas that we still have to do a little fine-tuning on.” One of those areas appears to be land values in certain parts of the county, where CLT has given higher assessments on parcels that contain structures than on similarly sized vacant lots.
The owners of approximately 50,000 of the county’s 78,000 parcels have received their preliminary new values, Hercik said.
Patti Hall, director of public information for the revaluation project, said that since only 5.5 percent of property owners are requesting informal meetings with CLT, most people must think the new values are fair. Hall also said that the county’s Web site was recently updated to give people access to property sales data for the past five years, to assist them in judging the fairness of their assessment.
When commissioner Sean M. Cavanagh asked why the sales data didn’t go back further, Hercik said, “A sale that occurred 10 years ago is really of no use” in determining current market value. He said that property values change so much over time that most appraisers view a three- to six-month sales comparison window as the ideal industry standard.
Also at the agenda meeting, the commissioners agreed to vote Thursday on naming four auxiliary tax-assessment appeals boards. Each of them will be comprised of three members, who will join the permanent three-member board in hearing formal appeals starting in July.
Hercik said that “pool of people” would enable the county to schedule the number of appeal hearings dictated by the reassessment. While the informal meetings property owners can schedule with CLT are informational and offer no guarantee of a reduction, the formal appeals process is a government function that can result in a ruling that lowers a property owner’s assessment.
Hercik said that assistant county solicitor John Cupp is researching whether the new board appointees must serve on a fixed appeals board, or whether the county will be able to mix and match members based on demand and availability.
Commissioners Cavanagh, Vincent A. Vicites and Ronald M. Nehls also agreed to vote Thursday on advertising to fill the new position of Clean & Green/mineral-assessment assistant. Hercik said his office needs a knowledgeable person devoted to those two specialty programs.
Clean & Green offers a preferential tax break to those who own at least 10 acres of land and agree to certain restrictions regarding its future development. The mineral assessments are a sub-category of assessment and are likely to generate substantial tax revenue starting in 2003, given the fact that those assessments will now be based on current market value, the same as surface property, instead of on 1958 values.
Cavanagh noted that Clean & Green gives a substantial tax break to the farm and forest industries, while no similar state program exists for residential property owners. Hercik said the state law that created Clean & Green clearly refers to it as a “preferential assessment,” and agreed that the primary beneficiaries are large landowners.
“It’s a state program, so we have no control over it. We have to offer it,” said Hercik.