MEMORANDUM
TO: All County Assessors
FROM: Micah G. Vincent, Commissioner
RE: Form Contracts for Annual Adjustments and Cyclical Reassessment
DATE: October 2, 2013
The Department of Local Government Finance (“Department”) has recently revised the form contract for annual adjustment (trending) services and has introduced a new form contract for cyclical reassessment services, as well as a new form contract for combined annual adjustment and cyclical reassessment services.
These new form contracts, which are posted at http://www.in.gov/dlgf/6854.htm, are available exclusively as “fillable” PDFs. The appropriate county officials and contractor representatives must type the requisite information into the fields, then print out the contract and personally sign it at a properly-advertised meeting. The original contract with the parties’ signatures should be mailed or hand-delivered to the Department. It is NOT necessary to overnight the contract to the Department as this only adds to the expenses charged by the contractors to the counties. Do NOT staple the contract or put it into any kind of binding. The Department will retain the original copy and will mail one photocopy to the county and one to the contractor. DoNOT send more than one copy of the contract to the Department.
PLEASE NOTE THAT PER IC 6-1.1-4-20, A CONTRACT FOR CYCLICAL REASSESSMENT SERVICES MAY NOT BE ENTERED INTO BY ANY PARTY UNTIL AFTER JANUARY 1, 2014. Counties are not prohibited from accepting bids for cyclical reassessment work prior to January 1, 2014. However, if the Department receives a cyclical reassessment contract entered into before January 1, 2014, it will be rejected outright.
A county assessor may not use the services of a professional appraiser for assessment or reassessment purposes without a written contract to which the Department is a signatory. These form contracts have been prescribed by the Department and approved by the Office of the Attorney General. The Department will NOT accept or approve any modifications to the prescribed form contracts. The form contracts have been designed as “fillable” PDFs to prevent any alterations from being made. Counties and contractors may NOT attempt to copy and paste from the form contracts, nor may they manually copy the form contracts. Should the Department receive any contracts that differ from the prescribed versions and/or that are not the “fillable” PDF versions, they will be rejected outright. Again, each form contract is to be used as-is.
The form contract for assessment software is forthcoming.
With regard to amending contracts, if a contract is for a specific year, it cannot be amended to cover additional years to circumvent bidding out the contract. Moreover, a contract for one service cannot be amended to include unrelated services. Counties should keep these factors in mind when advertising bids and entering into contracts. The Department will strictly enforce these policies and will reject any non-compliant addendum.
Questions may be directed to Staff Attorney Mike Duffy at 317-233-9219 or mduffy@dlgf.in.gov.
