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OPINION: Two Way Street on Property Taxes |
Jerry Driesens | 6/25/09
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In response to Bill Hudson's recent "Scratching Our Heads" editorials about the new property valuations in Archuleta County:
I think that it is highly unlikely that his house appreciated $80,000 in the last two years, or hardly anybody else's for that matter. I don't know any Realtor who believes that. I think that Assessor Keren Prior's general assumption that overall values rose by 15 percent over the last two years is also flawed. I can find examples in certain subdivisions where this appeared to be the case, but by using mass appraisal methods, it is easy to come up with misleading averages.
(If I have one foot in a pan of boiling water on top of my stove and the other in a bucket of ice on the floor ... my feet, on average, may be at a very comfortable temperature.)
 The big problem during the assessment period in 2007 and 2008 was that the number of sales were way down in this comp period, compared to the previous one. I have protested two of my tax assessments and I'm pretty sure that I have the comps to show that there was little or no increase in value in the past two years, and in one case a slight decrease.
However, if Mr. Hudson were to protest, (and I can see that he has apparently have decided not to) I firmly believe that in individual protest cases they would have to use comparable sales only in the the Town of Pagosa Springs.
I have researched this and there were 14 such sales during the comp period.
I have thrown out 3 of them. One was a ranch that sold for $3.2 million; another was a house on Hermosa that was riverfront and sold for $695,000 (my buyer believed that the .61 acre of riverfront property was, indeed worth a half a million.) The other one I threw out was on Lewis Street, because it had a separate rental property in back.
That leaves us with 11 sold comparables which sold for a total price of $2,541,000. There were a combined 15,279 square feet of heated living space in those 11 properties which comes out to $166 per sq. ft. of heated living space. So if you multiply the total heated footage of your downtown house by 166 - I think that the Assessor's office can easily justify that number. So if she is setting Mr. Hudson's house value at $271,000 and he has 1632 sq. ft. or more, he will likely get nowhere in a protest.
If his home is considerably smaller that 1632 sq. ft. I believe he could get a reduction — although I would be prepared to appeal the Assessor's decision to the County Commissioners; I have not found the Assessor's Office to be very open to being proven wrong once they have issued their edict.
If these kinds of increases are upheld, the County will receive lots of additional 1A money next year, so I doubt that they should really need nor will they get a $12 million bond issue passed in 2010. We have yet to see any real improvement to roads in general since approving 1A.
If the public does not see demonstrable improvements in roads, I do not believe we will renew 1A after the 5 years is up.
Also, the other road capital improvement funds that were "lent" to the other fund balances of the County, ostensibly to comply with state law, do not necessarily need to be spent. Many of us feel that those accounts need to just tighten their belts and pay the money back to the road capital improvement fund sooner, rather than later.
Perceptions may improve some after this year and the Park Avenue re-paving project — but a lot of people I've talked to feel like they've been conned twice into approving tax increases for better roads and not gotten anything for it.
Keren Prior will be under tremendous pressure in two years when, perhaps, values will decrease and the mill levy will remain frozen ... this could be an interesting two way street! |
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