Lucas County officials are bracing for a busy year of residents challenging their new property values, in part because Auditor Anita Lopez is advocating for taxpayers to do so.
The county’s Board of Revision — comprised of Treasurer Lindsay Webb, Commissioner Pete Gerken, and the auditor — annually review property value complaints and determine whether they warrant a change.
The board has heard between 1,473 and 3,463 cases each year over the past nine, with an annual average of about 2,100.
But the auditor said during a Jan. 14 meeting she believes this year will be different and anticipates the board could see five times as many complaints — or roughly 10,000 — largely stemming from a dispute between her office and the Ohio Department of Taxation.
Unhappy with a resolution between her office and the state over property value increases, Ms. Lopez took out a full-page advertisement in The Blade to let property owners know they can file a complaint. She is also speaking on the topic at business organizations and community meetings throughout the month.
“We want people to have fair and equitable values,” she said.
Mr. Gerken said the auditor is actively advocating that people contest their new values.
“Where every other website in the state says ‘board of revision’ our website says ‘challenge your property values,’” he said. “You are actually recruiting challenges.”
The auditor’s office has already recorded 540 complaints, 490 of which were concerning residential properties. Ms. Lopez said she believes the trend will continue until the April 1 deadline to file.
“If there is some indication that there are now 10,000 cases rather than 2,000 cases, we need to plan for that and be consistent,” Mr. Gerken said.
The 2018 revaluation process fell on a sexennial reappraisal year, which means the auditor’s office had to reappraise all property in the county and have the new aggregate values signed off on by the state’s tax commissioner.
Ms. Lopez and the tax commissioner agreed the housing market had improved, but they disagreed on how much the aggregate values should rise.
For example, state officials wanted to see Sylvania’s values grow by 14.3 percent, but Ms. Lopez believed they should only rise by 9.76 percent. The discrepancies continued for each of the county’s 22 municipalities, with the gap between the auditor’s value increases and the state’s ranging from less than 1 percent to 6.6 percent.
The back and forth between Lucas County and the state culminated in an official order from the tax commissioner telling Ms. Lopez to raise property values or risk losing state funding, something Department of Taxation officials said they haven’t done in 25 years.
The auditor pushed back, and the two parties eventually reached a compromise that collectively increased values 9 percent countywide, though some municipalities’ values went up by 12 percent while others only grew by 2 or 3 percent.
Ms. Lopez said she wasn’t happy with the resolution, but she reluctantly accepted because she knew that she could encourage residents to challenge their new values come January.
The first-half tax bill is what typically motivates homeowners to contest their new values, Ms. Lopez said.
Although aggregate values may have increased countywide, some property owners will see a decrease in their tax bill if their home’s valuation goes up by an amount less than the aggregate. This is because of a state property tax law in place to protect homeowners from inflation and likely would deter people from filing a complaint.
Mr. Gerken said he’d like to see all board of revision complaints heard and decided by June 1, ahead of the second-half tax bill. Ms. Lopez said she can try, adding cases typically take until October or November to clear.
The board decided to schedule hearings from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays for now and add hearing days if the caseload doesn’t let up.
The board of revision is set to meet again Jan. 28.
Source: By Sarah Elms / The Blade
Monday, January 21, 2019
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