Morning Metro: Fox5 Covers Property Assessments, No Smoking at AS?, and Is Traffic Congestion a Good Thing?
Decatur Metro | June 4, 2012- DeKalb residents upset over high property assessments [Fox5]
- Atlantic Station’s Facebook page asks whether it should ban smoking [ABC]
- Former Little Shop employee drawing cartoons for Patch [LSOS]
- Keep DeKalb Beautiful event at Twain’s tonight [CHCA]
- Georgia needs your garbage! [Atlanta Intown]
- Is traffic congestion really a drag on cities’ economies? [Atlantic Cities]
Latest from Decaturish
I quit going to Atlantic Station after they banned motorcycles. Sure…go ahead and ban smoking. May as well go ahead and ban customers.
Dear DM,
Thank you for blogging about my blog in which I blog about Justin’s comics blog in the Patch blog.
Dave
More TV coverage of assessments: http://www.wsbtv.com/s/news/dekalb/
I can’t find the piece. Did they refer at all to the apparent error(s), or just say people are whining because their assessments went up (as Ch 46 did several days ago)?
It was a little better but I’m not sure the media is totally getting it. I think Commissioner Rader (see Patch) does and probably the Tax Commissioner too (but he just says “go ahead and appeal).
No need to see Patch. Rader sent it out to everyone…
Annual Notices of Assessment hit homeowner’s mailboxes this week, and many constituents have called expressing concern about substantial increases in their tax appraisal this year. The appraisal determines the value of property against which taxes are assessed, and are a key factor in your tax bill. I was surprised to hear this, as the DeKalb County real property tax digest overall is down by 7.8% overall this year. Our office is seeking more information from the Assessor’s office and will be responding to individual inquiries. We will also report back to the public on any patterns of reappraisal or systemic deficiencies we discover. Until we are able to get to the bottom of this, please keep the following in mind:
· If you feel your property is not accurately appraised, please appeal your assessment. Instructions are included on the back page of your assessment notice, or on the internet at https://etax.dor.ga.gov.
· For personal assistance in appealing a tax appraisal, call Arthur Morrison at 404/371-2513 and Brian Jennings at 404/371-2808.
· You must appeal within 45 days to preserve your appeal rights, otherwise you lose the right to appeal until next year. My Notice of Assessment lists July 17, 2012 as the deadline.
· Appraisal procedures are structured by state law and the Georgia Department of Revenue, and are supervised by the Chief Assessor. Chief Assessor Calvin Hicks is in turn appointed by the DeKalb County Board of Assessors (BOA), who supervise his work, and review appraisals. The Board of Commissioners appoints the BOA, who must meet minimum qualifications, and who serve fixed terms. They cannot be prematurely removed without cause, in order to protect the integrity of their decision-making process.
· Appeals of appraisal are reviewed by the BOA, and can be further appealed to the Boards of Equalization (BOE), then to the Superior Court. The BOE are regular citizens appointed by the Grand Jury who receive training, operate with administrative support from the Clerk of Superior Court, and are not connected to the Board of Assessors. This structure is intended to minimize any undue influence by the BOA on the BOE, just as the BOA’s separate structure is intended to minimize undue influence by the Board of Commissioners, who of course are directly interested in the tax revenues that appraisals ultimately control.
Over the past few years, the appraisal process has become much more volatile and controversial. As sales prices inflated during the real estate bubble, appraisals did likewise. The General Assembly capped this inflationary appreciation for County taxes in 2006. If you haven’t moved, your assessed value should not have increased above the 2006 level, unless you have made new improvements to your home. In 2010, the General Assembly mandated that nearby foreclosures be included as “comparable sales” for the purpose of appraising property. Such sales had previously been excluded as comparables under the reasoning that they were “forced sales” and didn’t accurately reflect market conditions. Appraisals in neighborhoods where foreclosures were widespread plummeted, and tax revenues followed suit. The affect of this change was a substantial shift of the tax burden from newer development where equity was low and foreclosure was high, to older stable neighborhoods which (thankfully!) have not seen excessive foreclosure. Without foreclosures, the comparables didn’t decline, and neither did appraisals. Many of you live in such neighborhoods, and are bearing a higher proportion of the County’s tax burden than before.
Property taxes are one of the oldest forms of taxation, and are founded on the assumption that property owners have the ability to pay the assessed taxes, else they would not have incurred the obligation. Real estate inflation and foreclosure deflation have strained the system, creating an undue burden on some and a windfall for others. Governments that grew during the bubble have been challenged by the need to maintain basic services now that tax revenues have tanked. Stability has been lost for all stakeholders, and will only return when tax valuations are stabilized by taking inflationary bubbles and deflationary foreclosure out of the appraisal process.
I had not seen this, so thank you for sharing. The legislative cap (“If you haven’t moved, your assessed value should not have increased above the 2006 level, unless you have made new improvements to your home.”) is a pretty significant piece of information for many. (And by that, I mean hugely important.)
Translation: Nothing is going to be done about this, so if your appraisal skyrocketed, you need to appeal.
I love this line: “Many of you live in such neighborhoods, and are bearing a higher proportion of the County’s tax burden than before.” This is nothing but income redistrubution. His response should be “Unfortunately, as the tax revenues decrease, we have to find ways to cut costs, and ultimately may have to cut or reduce some services.” He even later acknowledges that the burden on a few is “undue”.
If property taxes are based on a fair assessment of the house’s market value, then it’s fine that people who own property in places like the City of Decatur, where values have remained stable or risen, end up bearing a higher proportion of the county’s tax burden than those who own property in areas of Dekalb county where property values have totally tanked. I have no problem with that.
But from the last thread plus other reports, it looks like the latest round of assessments are riddled with random errors, with some going way up and others going way down, so we have no reason to trust that changes to the assessments have any relationship to changes in the CMV. In that case, I feel like going along with my increased assessment is just being a sucker and a patsy.
I think that’s how a lot of us feel. Before we remodeled our house and had the worst house on the block, I would appeal an over-assessment. Then, after remodeling, I saw assessments go up at small reasonable increments during the period when the real estate market was strong in Decatur and most everywhere else in Metro Atlanta–those increases seemed fair and I did not question them. But the current assessment is bizarre in so many ways–the land value tripling, the house value halving, and the overall assessment going way up. If you look at the assessment pattern across Decatur, you cannot tell how much is a computer glitch vs. human error vs. bad data vs. random process and all of that may be going on. This I question. I don’t mind paying my fair share. But I expect a modicum of reality in assessments.
I have a new idea for cyber terrorists–hack the Property Assessment office and see if anyone notices.
I meant Ch 5, not Ch 46. (Don’t ask why I was watching Fox news, it was a weird fluke.)
Fluke, you say? Perhaps STG = closet repubilcan!
Actually, channel 5 local news bears no resemblance to the national Fox news network. The only thing in common is the name. IMO, the local channel is a credible news source without the drama of some other stations.
I don’t watch any of the local newscasts with any regularity, so I’m willing to make room for the possibility that I’ve made unfair assumptions about the local FOX affiliate — I have such a visceral disregard for the national FOX news organization. Sometimes I get exposed to it in a waiting room and it’s all I can do to keep from having a fit.
Rader writes:
“Governments that grew during the bubble have been challenged by the need to maintain basic services now that tax revenues have tanked.”
In other words, the County Commission took the bubble-induced windfall in tax receipts, spent all of it, and now consider those inflated revenues of the past as a baseline, below which “basic services” somehow can’t be maintained. But in fact, the cost of “basic services” should be almost entirely unrelated to the value of housing. If Rader and his colleagues had spent more prudently there would be no “challenge” facing the County now.
DeKalb Co. population grew by a mere 3.9% from 2000 to 2010, see http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/13/13089.html. That is total growth over 10 years, not annual compounded growth. What about spending? From 2000 to 2006, for example, the DeKalb Co budget increased by an amazing 9% annually, absolutely crushing the growth in poulation (and, as shown below, inflation). http://www.co.dekalb.ga.us/finance/pdf/budget/2006/Broadband-2006%20Budget%20Book.pdf.
Even after some spending reductions as we get closer to 2010, spending from 2001 to 2010 still increased at an annualized rate of 3.9% for a decade, again absolutely dwarfing population growth.
As for inflation, the 3.9% annual growth in spending also exceeds annual CPI increases over the same time, http://inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_rate/historicalinflation.aspx. This was particularly true from 2000 true through 2007, when the budget was increasing rapdily (again, close to 10% per year), but CPI was in normal ranges of 2% to the mid 3% range at its highest. DeKalb Co spending was therefore increasing its real (inflation adjusted) spending by about 6% annually over the time frame. The notion that “basic services” required this profligacy is ludicrous, especially considering the fact that the number of people living in the County over that time frame barely changed.