Aggressive-Mud6856 t1_j9sg9x4 wrote
I have 3 issues with most of the reporting on this lawsuit.
It doesn't discuss the core issue at hand: properties that do not get sold do not see their assessment change for years. I've owned my house for 20 years and my assessed value went up once, a very small amount. It is less than 1/2 the market value of my house. Until this situation is rectified in some way, this will continue. And nobody wants to vote for that, as no-one wants to see their taxes go up.
It doesn't describe the windfall that the attorneys who brought this lawsuit will see. As this article points out, it is expected that many homeowners will file appeals. Since many homeowners erroneously believe that they need an attorney to file appeals (they don't), there's going to be a lot of work for attorneys that specialize in this area. Those who brought this suit are going to be able to crow about it to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars (at least).
Most of the reporting gleefully paints the county, especially the groups involved in real estate and property assessment, as moustache-twirling cartoon villains, even though the county generally gets the least amount of revenue from an individual's property tax. This offends me as I have several friends that work in these departments. Generally speaking, they are just like everybody else - keeping their heads down, doing the best job they can in the situation, and trying to follow the often non-sensical rules handed down by their superiors. And many of them work in poor environments (have you been in the county office building lately?), work long hours, deal with angry people, and get paid, well, shitty. They don't deserve the name-calling and vitriol that has come out of the court, the attorneys, and the news.
In summary, it's a bad system that won't change until we, the voters, allow it to change. A previous commenter said that Fitzgerald wouldn't change anything because he was afraid the "old people" would vote him out of office. It's not just the old people. It's all of us. Very few people (likely including me) are going to vote for their taxes to go up every year or two (as a re-assessment every year would likely do) just so a new neighbor doesn't get screwed. We put ourselves into this situation, and it's only thru the power of the voting process that we can get out of it.
burritoace t1_j9tb3io wrote
Good write up, although it should be noted that regular assessments do not necessarily mean regular increases. Adjustments must generally be revenue neutral so millage rates could adjust to keep changes minor. Also, the current system doesn't really allow for taxes to fall in places where values decline - regular assessments would allow that.
I expect any substantial change would also come with an expanded homestead exemption, which I think would be appropriate.
enemy_of_your_enema t1_j9ut41w wrote
>And nobody wants to vote for that, as no-one wants to see their taxes go up.
I think people could vote for this if we knew it meant we'd get specific improvements in schools/public services as a result. That's exactly how the parks tax got passed a couple years ago.
Aggressive-Mud6856 t1_j9v7bgt wrote
I agree with you in principle. However, I think it's tough given the historical nature that we approach taxes with to be able to set aside buckets for certain improvements. If we were like other states that had specific ballot initiatives to vote on and people actually did then I think that would work. The issue, as I find it in my community is that many people would vote against any form of tax increase for schools based off of either political considerations or simply because they feel that if they don't have kids in the schools, they shouldn't have to pay any property tax.
Personally, I would much rather go to a tax initiative system as opposed to a general tax but that's not what we've done historically and would require a fairly significant mental change. But that's just my opinion.
Sorry for the rambling sentences, I'm using text to speech and it doesn't pick up that it should put a comma in 😉
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