Published: January 29, 2006 05:47 pm      

Watch tax assessments carefully

By William Jones

Dear Editor,



In your Wednesday, September 11, 2002, edition of the Progress Argus, you reported (in your column entitled “Equalization Actions Are Contested by Assessors”) information pertaining to actions taken previously by the Butts County Board of Equalization wherein adjustments were made to assessments on properties which I either own or have an ownership interest. In your report, you quoted spokesmen for The Board of Tax Assessors, The Board of Commissioners, and The Board of Equalization. You conveniently omitted any comment from the person at which your article was directed. I have an old friend who used to practice law here in Butts County who had a saying that you can roll a pancake as flat and thin as you can and when you get through it still has two sides. I was disappointed that your article was completely one sided.



In your column you reported accurately that taxpayers have the right to appeal any action by the Board of Tax Assessors for assessments a taxpayer feels are unfair. In the instant case I received assessment increases totaling almost 2.2 million dollars for the 2002 year. Had you attempted to balance your report with information from all affected parties, your coverage would have revealed the following facts.



1.



When a taxpayer files an appeal, he is given two options on which to base his appeal:

(A) he either can dispute the values the Board of Assessors has assessed his property or (B) he can allege that the values assigned by the Board of Assessors cause the property not to be uniform in value with similar comparable properties. In each instance we registered an appeal based on the fact that the property in question was not uniformly valued with comparable properties in the county.



2.



When a taxpayer presents his case to the Board of Equalization, the burden is on him to prove why the Board of Assessors’ assessment is unfair. Our approach to proving our



case was to get comparable properties the Board of Assessors had assessed to show how our assessments were out of line with assessments placed on similar properties. The Board of Assessors has the same opportunity to prove its position.



3.



When we compared our 2001 valuations (prior to the 2002 assessment changes), we found that we were overwhelmingly assessed at values higher than the comparables we used for the 2002 comparisons. Our 2002 assessment increases of nearly 2.2 million dollars only added insult to injury.



4.



With one exception, after the 2002 adjustments made by the Board of Equalization on our assessments, we are still assessed at well above any of the comparable properties in the county and at values higher than last year’s assessments.



5.



Your article would have your readers believe that I own People’s Financial Services, Incorporated. The fact is I own 25% of the company stock.



6.



The 2001 assessments of The People’s Financial Services, Incorporated were almost double the amount of any comparable assessments in that year. In 2002 the Board of Assessors raised the 2001 assessment by $410,420 which caused us to be assessed at almost four times the amount of any comparable properties owned by others nearby. How can anyone justify this kind of increase?



7.



The chief tax appraiser for the Board of Assessors, Mr. Wayne King, doubles as a real estate agent and land appraiser, a situation many believe to create a huge conflict of interest for the person in this job.



8.



In the hearing before the Board of Equalization on the People’s Financial appeal, Mr. King used an adjacent property as one of the Board of Assessors comparables to justify their assessments. This comparable property (owned at the time by the McCord Estate) sold in August of 2001 for $1,006,000 or $4500 per acre. This property is located on Halls Bridge Road and Strickland Pasture Road. The per acre assessment before the sale was $1200 per acre. The 2002 assessment (after the sale) remains at $1200 per acre.





9.



In the People’s Financial Services hearing referred to above, it was revealed that the Board of Assessors’ chief appraiser, Mr. King, had performed a private fee appraisal of the above property for the estate owners and that this appraisal was for approximately twice the value he had assessed the property for tax purposes. Additionally, this same appraiser acted as the real estate agent in selling this property which, as shown above, sold for almost four times its assessed value. The only impact I can see this sale had on tax assessments was to raise the value of the adjacent People’s Financial Services property by the aforementioned $410,420. If space would allow, we could cite example after example of huge discrepancies in values which bear no rhyme or reason to their true values. For example, the lot where Bruster’s Ice Cream is located is valued at $267,560 excluding the improvements. A house lot located beside the Kentucky Fried Chicken within 100 yards of the Bruster’s site on Third Street is valued at $16,800.



10.



Your article would have your readers believe that somehow we have cost the county $27,611 in tax revenue. This is nonsense. The truth is that this money never existed since the Tax Assessors’ bogus assessments of the affected properties were set aside by action of the Board of Equalization.



11.



Your article revealed that the Board of Assessors urged the Board of Commissioners to appeal the Board of Equalization adjustments on the People’s Financial Services property to the Superior Court. I agree this action should be taken if the facts I have outlined above are shown to be incorrect.



12.



I don’t see how any Butts County taxpayer can have any confidence in a tax assessment system headed by a chief appraiser who is allowed to assess a parcel of property at one value, turn around and charge a fee for a private appraisal of the same property at a higher value, then collect a real estate commission on a still higher value when he sells it. As I told Mr. King at the hearings, his assessments are based more on who the taxpayer is rather than what and where the property is located. Isn’t it odd that, of all the actions taken by the Board of Equalization to correct unequal assessments, your report centers only on our appeals and one other?



Finally, during our Board of Equalization hearings, we stressed that we were only seeking uniformity in our assessments as compared to similar and often time adjacent properties to ours. Based on the evidence presented, the Board of Equalization made substantial adjustments to our 2002 increases but overall left them higher than they were in 2001 and, with one exception, higher than all the comparables we cited.



In conclusion, I would recommend strongly to any county taxpayer who receives an assessment change from the Board of Assessors that he/she take the time to be sure that your assessment changes are in line with properties comparable to your own.



Thank you for allowing me the space to respond to last week’s article.



Sincerely,

William B. Jones

Jackson