{"id":16024,"date":"2016-03-11T16:01:52","date_gmt":"2016-03-11T21:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=16024"},"modified":"2016-03-11T16:03:35","modified_gmt":"2016-03-11T21:03:35","slug":"help-fix-land-revaluation-come-to-farm-bureau-board-of-equalization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2016\/03\/help-fix-land-revaluation-come-to-farm-bureau-board-of-equalization.html","title":{"rendered":"Help fix land revaluation: come to Farm Bureau –Board of Equalization"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nCome to the Farm Bureau in two weeks to hear\r\nTax Assessor staff present their updates and provide your input\r\n\r\n\"Contents\"<\/a>\r\nfor changes to the\r\nrural land revaluation, this time taking into account rivers, aquifer recharge zones, and uniformity.\r\nMaybe the Tax Assessors actually don’t want more flooding in Valdosta;\r\nboth the City of Valdosta and GA-EDP have already shown interest in attending\r\nabout that point.\r\n

\r\nAt an appeal on my property valuation,\r\nthe Board of Equalization stopped short of actually ordering the Tax Assessors to redo last year’s rural land revaluation, because staff volunteered\r\n\r\n in the meeting to go ahead and work with the public on ongoing changes, starting with that Farm Bureau meeting.\r\nThe hearing Board did remark pointedly, while making their ruling of no change to our specific assessment, that we could appeal again next year, or we could even go ahead and appeal to Superior Court this year.\r\nNaturally, we’d prefer not to do that, as long as the Tax Assessors move along and do what they promised to do.\r\nYou are all invited to the upcoming Farm Bureau meeting to help . We’ll post the specifics as soon as we know them.\r\nThanks to Farm Bureau president George Biles for agreeing to set up that meeting.\r\n

\r\nThe Board of Equalization acknowledged we’d made our point that the recent rural land revaluation by the Board of Assessors was not uniform,\r\nbecause of the numerous examples Gretchen Quarterman presented from\r\n\r\nthe book she had prepared<\/a>.\r\nThat was before landowner Carolyn Selby, as a witness for appellant John S. Quarterman, spelled out yet more examples of lack of uniformity in last year’s rural land revaluation for both large and small tracts.\r\nAnd before Farm Bureau president George Biles, as another witness,\r\nspelled out the point that raising tax valuations on surrounding property\r\nleads to land sales that produce subdivisions,\r\nresulting in tracts surrounded by subdivisions,\r\nwhich causes those landowners to sell, as well,\r\nlike just happened with the Webb property<\/a>.\r\nIn other words, raising tax valuations drives development to areas so raised.\r\nThis is what the county and Tax Assessors are doing to this county.\r\nIf we wanted to live in Atlanta, we would.\r\n

\r\nDriving development into the agricultural north of the county also adversely affects Valdosta and the south end of the county, by not assisting development close in to existing services, for example on the south side of Valdosta. \r\n

\r\nThe County Commission the previous day had just\r\napproved an ongoing contract<\/a> with \r\nGMASS*<\/a>, Inc. to perform maintenance updates to the Rural Land Schedules for the 2016 Digest<\/a>.\r\nDe Gist, who along with Lisa Bryant was representing\r\nthe Board of Assessors<\/a>,\r\nsaid in the hearing said that they had already started modifying the \r\n\r\nRural Land Accessibility Codes<\/a>\r\nmap and underlying data.\r\n\r\nBoard of Equalization<\/a> hearing\r\nChair Gelana Goddard, with Alternate Joe Clark and Member Lana Hall,\r\nsaid that considering those two points above,\r\nthat it seemed like the Assessors were going ahead and dealing with the\r\nissues of uniformity raised in the hearing,\r\nthe hearing panel declined to order the Tax Assessors to fix the lack of uniformity, while very pointedly noting our rights of appeal, either next year\r\nthrough the same means, or this year to Superior Court.\r\n

\r\n\r\n*GMASS<\/a> is\r\n\r\nGeorgia Mass Appraisal Solutions & Services<\/a> of\r\n3439 Kelly Bridge Rd, Dawsonville, GA, 30534<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nBelow is the text of the\r\n\r\nQuarterman 0101-084 Document List<\/a>,\r\nfor the book we gave to each of the three BoE members plus one for the Tax Assessors staff in the hearing.\r\nHere I’ve added links to most of the documents that were in the book,\r\nplus some narrative notes indicating roughly how the hearing went.\r\nThe notes are probably not exactly in the same order as events occured,\r\nand they are certainly not exhaustive.\r\nWe planned to have video, but the usual LAKE video camera was at another meeting,\r\nand the fallback camera failed; sorry about that.\r\nVDT reporter Jason Stewart was also there, and he has a copies of all the documents; his editor may yet agree to him\r\nfiling a story.\r\n

\r\n

\r\nNumber Item \r\n

1) 2015 Tax Assessment \r\n
2) 2012 Tax Assessment (Historical) \r\n
3) 0101 084 Qpublic map<\/a>\r\n
4) 0101 084 Qpublic Card<\/a>\r\n
5) Property Record Card 2004 \r\n

\r\nThe above were all detail on my specific property that I was appealing, which is on Quarterman Road in the far north central part of the county, near the county line.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThen we shifted to the larger context from the Lowndes County Comprehensive Plan,\r\nwhich was agreed on by the entire county as the plan for the future of the county.\r\n

6)\r\n Lowndes County Future Development Map \r\n(from Comprehensive Plan<\/a>) \r\n
7)\r\n\r\nLowndes County Sub Watershed Map<\/a>\r\n(from Comprehensive Plan<\/a>) \r\n
8)\r\n\r\nLowndes County Groundwater Recharge Areas<\/a>\r\n(from Comprehensive Plan<\/a>) \r\n
9)\r\n\r\nLowndes County Generalized Soil Associations<\/a>\r\n(from Comprehensive Plan<\/a>) \r\n
10)\r\n\r\nLowndes County Land Capability – Cultivated<\/a>\r\n(from Comprehensive Plan<\/a>) \r\n
11) Lowndes County Land Capability – Forestry \r\n(from Comprehensive Plan) \r\n
12)\r\n\r\nLowndes County Zoning Map (December 2015)<\/a>\r\n

\r\nAround this point Joe Clark wondered what all this had to do with the\r\nspecific valuation of our property.\r\nWe said that wasn’t the main point.\r\nAs the attendance at the previous Farm Bureau meeting demonstrated, and the\r\npresence of the two witnesses we had brought with us, the point was\r\nthe irregular manner in which the whole rural revaluation was done.\r\nLots of people are thinking not just of their particular property,\r\nbut of the entire county.\r\n

\r\nAs Chair Gelana Goddard had pointed out at the beginning of the hearing,\r\nthe Board of Equalization can consider uniformity, not just valuation, per\r\n\r\nO.C.G.A. 48-5-311.(d)(2)<\/a>, the text of which we had stuck in the back of the book for convenient reference:\r\n

\r\n

\r\nIf in the course of determining an appeal\r\nthe county board of equalization finds reason to believe that the\r\nproperty involved in an appeal or the class of property in which is\r\nincluded the property involved in an appeal is not uniformly assessed\r\nwith other property included in the digest, the board shall request\r\nthe respective parties to the appeal to present relevant information\r\nwith respect to that question.\r\nIf the board determines that uniformity\r\nis not present, the board may order the county board of tax assessors\r\nto take such action as is necessary to obtain uniformity, except that,\r\nwhen a question of county-wide uniformity is considered by the board,\r\nthe board may recommend a partial or total county-wide revaluation only\r\nupon a determination by a majority of all the members of the board that\r\nthe clear and convincing weight of the evidence requires such action.<\/span>\r\nThe\r\nboard of equalization may act pursuant to this paragraph whether or not\r\nthe appellant has raised the issue of uniformity.<\/strong><\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nNote that last sentence (I added the boldface).\r\nIt doesn’t even matter whether you checked “uniformity” on your appeal card when you filed.\r\nThe Board of Equalization can consider uniformity anyway.\r\nAnd if the Board finds lack of uniformity, it has the power to order the\r\nTax Assessors to fix it (the middle sentence I set in larger type).\r\n

\r\nQuoting the Georgia law was necessary because both Ellis Black and Mike Hill\r\nhad told us at the previous Farm Bureau meeting<\/a>\r\nthat the Board of Equalization could only consider specific parcels,\r\nnot general and systemic issues.\r\nThat is simply not true according to the state law that set up the Board of Equalization: in fact they can consider uniformity, and they can even order the Tax Assessors to fix it.\r\n

\r\nSo that left the requirement of the first sentence: presenting relevant information.\r\n

13)<\/a>\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n\r\nRural Land Accessibility Codes<\/a>\r\n(from \r\nRural Land Revaluation (Large Parcel)<\/a>) \r\n

\r\nThis map from the Tax Assessors’ \r\n\r\nRural Land Revaluation (Large Parcel)<\/a>\r\ndoes not match the maps from the Comprehensive Plan, especially for the\r\nnorthern part of the county, and for the rivers and aquifer recharge zones.\r\n

\r\nJoe Clark asked what did we mean when we said the whole county had agreed on the Comprehensive Plan.\r\nI said there were public meetings for input, some of which I attended back in 2005,\r\nafter which all the elected bodies in the county held public hearings and voted to approve the Comprehensive Plan, including the County Commission and the\r\nCity Councils of all five cities: Valdosta, Remerton, Hahira, Dasher, and Lake Park.\r\nGretchen noted there were updates every five years in a similar process,\r\nand we’d just attended\r\n\r\na public input workshop Monday<\/a> for the current update.\r\nThat seemed to satisfy the Board that the Comprehensive Plan really is the plan agreed upon by the whole county.\r\n

\r\nIt’s pretty clear just by looking at it that the Tax Assessors’\r\n\r\nRural Land Accessibility Codes<\/a> map does not match the Comprehensive Plan maps, nor the current Lowndes County zoning map,\r\nand in numerous places blatantly contradicts them.\r\n

\r\nGretchen proceeded into detail about last year’s\r\n\r\nRural Land Revaluation (Large Parcel)<\/a>.\r\nThe Board of Equalization member had not seen that document, and the Tax Assessor staff had not brought any copies with them, but we had an extra copy, which we provided to the hearing board, along with the extracts in the book.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n14)\r\n\r\nLarge Tract Sales<\/a>\r\n(from \r\nRural Land Revaluation (Large Parcel)<\/a>) \r\n

15) Large Tract Sales Comparables<\/a>\r\n

\r\nWe brought up that in the previous Farm Bureau meeting\r\n\r\neither Chief Appraiser Silar Hrobar or Tax Assessor Mike Hill had said<\/a> that\r\naccessibility didn’t really mean proximity to roads and road frontage only applied after staff decided on geographical areas of similarity.\r\nI had repeated it back to him and he confirmed that it was staff and not the consultant who made such decisions.\r\n

\r\nDe Gist said that actually she had first gotten a draft from the consultant\r\ntaking into account such criteria and then she had worked with them\r\nto modify it.\r\nWe pointed out that was not what we were told in the Farm Bureau meeting,\r\nand we had four witnesses sitting at the table right then in the hearing\r\n(Gretchen, jsq, Selby, and Biles),\r\nplus video of the Farm Bureau meeting.\r\n

\r\nDe Gist said she was working to represent the concerns of taxpayers.\r\nWe thanked her for that.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n16)\r\nLarge Tract Sales Qpublic Cards\r\n

\r\nDe Gist said the Rural Land Accessibility Codes<\/a> areas of geographical valuation had been decided on the basis of prior sales.\r\nYou can readily see if you follow the links below to the maps of the\r\nactual comparable sales listed by the Tax Assessors that none<\/strong><\/em> of these sales were in the north Lowndes area where my property is,\r\nyet that area is shown in red in a highest valuation geographical area.\r\n

\r\nWe also pointed out numerous other discrepencies, such as the\r\ntwo sales to Bill Gates in and near Lake Park that were used as benchmarks\r\nand are next to US 42 South, yet are not<\/strong><\/em> shown as hightest valuation.\r\n