By Susan Redden

sredden@joplinglobe.com

CARTHAGE, Mo. — Most cities, school districts and other Jasper County entities have set their tax levies for 2007, but the property values on which those numbers are based can only be described as a moving target.

This is because landowners continue to appeal higher property values set in countywide reassessment completed earlier this year. The county’s board of equalization has heard appeals from about 350 landowners so far, and more are to be heard next week. Appointments with the BOE are set daily through Friday.

While many government levies must be set by the end of August, state law gives counties until Sept. 20 to set their levies, said Richard Webster, county auditor. He said a new county tax levy will be considered after a public hearing when the county commission meets at 9 a.m. Thursday.

Tax rates set by local governments must be approved by the state auditor’s office. But officials understand that final numbers may be late in coming in reassessment years, said Becky Webb, training and tax rate supervisor for the state office.

“In reassessment years, when there is an increase in protests, BOE can go beyond late July or early August when they normally wrap up,” she said. “Districts may have had to use the best numbers they have available at the time and then they can do a revision next year.”

In Jasper County, the assessor’s office was swamped with calls from residents wanting to question their higher values. All the informal appeals have been heard, but office workers still are making changes to property values as a result of residents’ questions. That includes people who called the assessor’s office but who could not be reached when the office tried to call them back, said Lisa Perry, a deputy assessor.

“If we could not reach them, we went ahead and checked their appraisal. In places where we found obvious problems, we corrected them,” she said. Those property owners, as well as others who got through, will receive letters from the assessor’s office.

“If they called and got on a list here, they will get a letter. But we’re asking people to still be patient because there are still some letters that need to go out.”

Landowners not satisfied with that decision still can appeal to BOE, she added.

Perry said she did not know how many informal appeals had been made by property owners. That number is being tracked by Sharon Collier, chief deputy assessor, who has been out of the office this week along with Davis and other workers for a meeting and training session.

After a 2001 Jasper County reassessment, several thousand landowners made informal appeals of higher property values to the assessor’s office. About 900 took appeals on to the BOE in a process that lasted into November.

Davis has said that in some ways, that reassessment still is having an impact this year. Problems with a newly purchased computerized mass appraisal system used that year could not be fixed, so that system was scrapped and replaced with a new system that was fully used for the first time for the 2007 reappraisal.

Because of the time it took to change over to a new system, Jasper County has not done a full, countywide reassessment since 2001. Davis said some of what people are reacting to is “sticker shock” because property values have increased over the period while appraisals have not kept up.

Many property owners, however, have cited property values they say are unrealistically high and not a reflection of market value.



Missouri law

State law requires counties to reassess every odd-numbered year, and to set real estate values within 5 percent of market value.