By Aidan Mortensen | KOAL News
During an update from Carbon County Assessor Amy Schmidt-Peters and Chief Deputy Assessor Keven Ewell, the Carbon County Commission allowed resident Bob Teney to take the podium to ask the pair of assessors about the assessment method and property taxes.
This presentation opened with Schmidt-Peters giving an update to the commissioners regarding the number of appeals the Assessor’s office has received. “We so far have had about 272 appeals for the Board of Equalization. Many of them are being worked through the Assessor’s Office if their characteristics were wrong. We’re updating that and then offering the property owner the chance to be OK with that assessment and sign off on it before going to the board.”
She continued,” We do suggest to the public that if you are making an appeal, you do come with comparables. And what I mean by that is that if you have a 2,000 square foot home, stick-built, you want to compare it to other very relevant, close homes that are stick-built as well.”
Schmidt-Peters also gave thanks to the residents of Price who filled out the survey the office sent to them. “I want to thank all the patrons who are sending those back to us. We’ve had a really great turnout. People have been filling them out and sending them back. We appreciate that very much. It will make our reappraisal easier.”
The mic was then passed to Ewell, who provided a technical update for the commission,” We’ve been working to get the website updated, and we’ve got all of the property characteristics now available for both residential and commercial properties on the web. There are still a few things that are missing. So, we’re working with Barry (Horsley) to ensure that those get done.”
Ewell also discussed the BOE cycle for the year,” We feel BOE is going very well this year. We’ve had some areas of concern, and we’ve addressed those head-on. Out of the 272 appeals we’ve had, about a hundred of those are from the taxpayers, and the rest are from our office. So we still have the lion’s share of the appeals under our office.”
After this presentation, the Board of Commissioners reconvened as the Board of Equalization to again hear from Ewell. ” There are about 54 parcels on the list. I’m going to try to get this to you every two weeks, so it’s not overwhelming. And provided there is the parcel number, the appeal number, the person appealing, and some of the reasons for the justification.”
Following this, the Commissioners approved the stipulations and adjustments that have been made to date.
Before moving ahead in the meeting, Bob Teney requested a moment to ask questions regarding the assessment process and why property taxes sit where they do. “I’m just curious as to how property values in the county and the city of Price have gone extremely high in one year.” He continued,” I don’t see an overpopulation moving into Price where there’s a housing shortage. I just don’t understand how my home value could have increased $100,000 in a year.”
Ewell volunteered to answer this question, stepping to the podium and addressing Teney,” I don’t know anything about your property, so I’d have to take a look at the characteristics and stuff. Some properties had a large increase because they were way undervalued. I don’t know if that’s your case or not. We’ll definitely take a look.”
The Assessor added,” So, basically, what we do is we take the property characteristics and we look at all of the sales. And when we look at the sales, then we say, OK, characteristics are correct. And we do a market-adjusted cost approach. So basically, once we do that, then we look and see where those costs are lying within the market, and we make an adjustment to those market costs up or down. Price City did not have a large factor to push up or down, but if you do that, then you take that from the cells and you apply it to the population. Now we see a lot of bounces because in the county, we haven’t consistently valued property every year. We’ve done factoring and pushing up and pushing down. But when you actually go and revalue every property every year in the county, you have to rely heavily on the property characteristics that the properties have.”
Teney responded, stating,” My understanding of what he just said is that our taxes are evaluated on the real estate market. To me, real estate companies are for-profit organizations that will make as much money as they can off what they have and what they can sell. So why are we prisoners to the real estate agent when we have a county assessor here who is supposed to assess our value, and it should not be rated on what the real estate company says?”
Ewell replied,” It’s rated on fair market value, which is what properties sell for, so that’s by state statute. Now, the taxes, the taxes don’t necessarily go up or down with the market. The taxes haven’t gone up or down with the value of the homes, right? So if the values of the home have gone up and the taxes are the same, then you’re floating with the rest of the market.”
He added,” The thing that is fixed in the equation is the amount of tax that is collected every year. So if they collect, I’m just going to throw $1,000 out there. I know you collect more than $1,000, but they always get to collect that $1,000. We have a group of properties. I call it the appraisal pie. And that’s the valuation pie. So everybody owns a piece of it. So, as your values float up and down that market, as long as your slice of pie doesn’t change size, like if say your property raises 10% and everybody else raised 5%, then your piece of pie grew a little bit in your taxes raised. But as long as yours stays consistent with all of the other properties, then there’s no net increase or decrease in property taxes. That’s how the state statute is written. But absolutely, we will take a look at your value.”
Teney fired back,” There was supposed to be a big problem with the last Assessor. We got a new assessor and all of a sudden the property values shot up, that doesn’t make sense … I don’t understand how the property values have raised so much in this area. When we were at our lowest four years ago.”
Commissioner Larry Jensen started to reply, citing the COVID-19 pandemic significantly lowering home values before being interrupted by Teney, who exclaimed,” That’s a poor excuse.”
Commissioner Jensen rebutted,” Well, you don’t fully understand what he’s trying to tell you. You need to go visit with them because there’s a reason,” before moving to the next agenda item.