EDITORIAL Washington County property owners deserve all the facts with reassessment
There’s simply no way that an undertaking as large and complicated as Washington County’s property reassessment could be flawless. In fact, it’s safe to say some property owners – maybe a lot of them – got the short end of the stick in the process.
One of those who believes he got shafted in the reassessment is Washington resident Mike Jones, regional editor of this newspaper, and he’s going above and beyond the typical reassessment challenge to find out exactly how the valuation of his property was determined.
As we reported earlier this week, Jones, who lives on Acheson Avenue, said he found glaring inequities in his property valuation, as compared with those of other properties in his neighborhood.
In Washington, buildings and land are taxed separately. Jones said the parcel of ground on which his house sits, which is less than a quarter acre, was valued at $4.04 a square foot. But just over the hill from his place, on Redstone Lane, there’s a five-acre parcel that is assessed at 26 cents a square foot. The citywide average is $1.47 per square foot.
“My land was assessed at twice as much as some of my immediate neighbors, 20 times as much as other properties in my neighborhood,” said Jones.
Armed with that information, and more, Jones took his case before the county board of assessments in October, and despite the evidence he presented, his appeal was denied. He and his wife now have an appeal pending in Washington County Court.
During his research into the reassessment, in general, and his property valuation, in particular, Jones said he found “wide variations” in the newly assigned land values for properties in Washington.
Being an inquisitive newsman, he wondered how that could happen, so he sought information as a private citizen from the county about what methods, precisely, were employed by the county’s reassessment contractor, Tyler Technologies, in reaching the new property assessment figures.
That’s when he ran into a roadblock. County officials argued the information Jones is seeking isn’t part of any public record, so essentially there was nothing that could be provided to him. What Jones wanted, according to his original open-records request to the county, was the “formula/methodology/algorithm” used by Tyler in calculating land values in Washington County.
The county denied the request and suggested Jones contact Tyler. Instead, he filed an appeal with the state Office of Open Records, and that agency this week ordered the county to turn over records showing how Tyler arrived at the new land values.
Said appeals officer Kathleen A. Higgins in her decision, “Based on the evidence submitted, the county has established that Tyler Technologies conducted a reassessment on behalf of the county, but has not demonstrated or addressed whether the company was contacted by the county regarding the requested records. A county property assessment relates to a government function, and thus, records in possession of Tyler Technologies related to the county reassessment are accessible.”
Tyler certainly wasn’t very accessible, or forthcoming, when an O-R reporter contacted the company earlier this week to seek information about its assessment methods.
“Please contact the county with any questions you have related to the Washington County reassessment project,” spokeswoman Jennifer Kepler said in an email.
The county, using legal avenues, stalled for as long as possible before finally agreeing to conduct the reassessment, and it seems likely to us the county and Tyler will make Jones jump through every possible legal hoop in his efforts to obtain information.
We believe it’s perfectly reasonable to expect the county and/or Tyler to cough up this information. Remember when you were a kid in math class, and the teacher reminded you to “show your work”? That’s all Jones is asking for here.
It’s our hope his efforts are successful, so he and every other property owner in the county who thinks he or she got a raw deal in the reassessment can have access to every bit of relevant information used to reach the new property valuations, in order to better argue their cases seeking lower assessments.