County assessor Cathy Lane leafed through a a large stack of property tax assessment appeals, some 500 in all.
Over the last few months she’s met with the owners responsible for filing every single one of them and in the majority of cases has been able to come to an agreement with them on how much the owner should pay, thereby calming a process once plagued with angry homeowners upset about new (and more-often-than-not higher) assessments.
“Ninety-five percent of all these appeals I have been able to solve right away,” she said, her hand firmly affixed on the large stack. “I know the properties. I know the locations.
“I want taxpayers to feel comfortable coming in here and talking to me. They will always be aware of what’s going on.”
But 2012 was the first year Knox County used such a form to better communicate with property owners before the actual bill is sent out.
The past couple of years, Lane said, has caused a “ripple effect” through the county’s property owners. As taxing entities saw their revenue go down, reassessments were done and past errors corrected. New (and in some cases old) properties were added to the tax rolls as well.
As a result, the county’s net assessed valuation has increased by more than $365 million, with most of that increase coming in the northern part of the county. Significant increases were seen in Busseron, Washington, Vigo and Widner townships along with Oaktown, Edwardsport and Bruceville.
After the state changed the way it calculates property values several property owners saw the value of improvements go up while land values went down slightly. Commercial land values went up as did the value of farm ground.
After bills were sent out in April 2012, Lane’s office was full of people disputing their new assessments.
Lane hope that with use of the Form 11, many questions have already been answered and the result will be an easier billing process with the money flowing in more readily than before.
And that will mean good news for the Vincennes Community School Corp., which last year only collected about 84 percent of what it hoped to get in the way of property tax revenue. The year before it got just 75 percent.
And while the property tax caps approved by the General Assembly in 2008 have a lot to do with that, a more fixable problem is that the lack of money is because people simply don’t pay their bills, either because they can’t or because of a appeal by the property owner.
“Every time appeals aren’t addressed until after the bills are sent out, that’s taking money out of what we thought we were going to have,” Lane said. “Some you can’t help, of course, but my hope is we can get these appeals addressed sooner, that way (taxing entities) like the school corporation get everything they think will be coming to them.”
•••
http://suncommercial.com/articles/2013/03/09/news/local_news/doc513bf34b9410f215949004.txt
