Serve the Servants

Last year, the appeal process for our property taxes was a three-part whipsaw of good cop/bad cop. Fortunately, the final say went to the good cop who came to the house and did a visual inspection, both inside and outside the house. She lowered the valuation dramatically. One would think that the folks at the tax office would consider that level of scrutiny an accurate way to determine the value.

When we got our tax appraisal this year, the value had gone up again, while I knew that the real estate market had been flat at best. In preparation for the initial hearing, I rarely do much research, though I have in the past taken in pictures of our rooms with 7 foot ceilings, etc. This time I checked the valuations of all of our neighbors on our side of the street. Down, way down! Everybody else's values had dropped from between $10,000 and $35,000 from last year.

So, with last year's visual inspection (assumed to be accurate, right?), and the neighbors' drop in value, I had a  case to make. I did not want to go to stage two, the formal hearing, which was a very adversarial, bad cop situation last year. Fortunately, the informal hearing people are good cops, willing to find ways to resolve the issue in your favor, if it can be justified.

After waiting in the crowded hallway for more than an hour, my name was called. I made my case to Ms. Reese, with the emphasis on the amounts by which my neighbors values had gone down. My goal was to keep my value the same as last year, not to lower it again. She punched up something on her computer that got pretty close to what I was looking for, then ran some other numbers that would be fatal to my case. We went with the first set of numbers, and she checked with a supervisor to make sure we could settle on keeping the value the same as last year. Why, yes we could do that, was the reply.

In 16 years, I've only appealed four times, so I don't do it for fun. It's not fun, but it is educational, interesting, and worth it when you win.
I've never been treated unfairly, or disrespectfully, by anyone while going through this process.

The current weather conditions inspired the use of this photo for today's blog entry.  I cannot wait for cooler, even cold, weather.

Peace,

JS4