From the La Porte Herald-Angus:
La Porte County Assessor Mike Schultz is looking to make the reconciled tax bills more accurate and reach the right people of La Porte County for his first reassessment.
Officials from La Porte County and the Indiana Department of Local Government Finance conducted a hearing Wednesday at the La Porte County Complex to address the assessor’s proposal of a different way to gather information for more accurate billing.
“Basically we just want to make sure all the crayons are in the box before we start coloring the picture,” said Schultz after the meeting. “It is hard to color a blue sky if you're missing a blue crayon.”
Schultz has proposed to use the data from the 2012 general reassessment inspections for the 2010 pay 2011 assessment date. He said that when he reviewed the data that had been received so far, it seemed a lot was missed.
“Now that we are nearing the end and we are doing Pictometry that is showing 11,000 changes, something is wrong,” said Schultz. He said their conclusion to the situation is in order of having a fair tax system where everybody pays their fair share, they need to start making sure all the assessments are fair to begin with.
“With the adaption of the request of our assessor, I believe that new data will be employed, will be used fairer and more just assessments will come out tax rates will be closer to what they should be and the public,” said County Commissioner Ken Layton.
Layton added that some people who have lived in their homes for three years have never received a tax bill and although the county has been very far behind, things have progressed considerably in the past six months.
Schultz said when the assessment misses homes and buildings, the assessment is not collected and therefore the rate is higher and people are paying more taxes because some are not paying their share.
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http://heraldargus.com/articles/2012/04/27/news/local/doc4f9a042ac313a237794594.txt
