Residential property owners in McCall and Cascade have received another round of assessments from the Valley County Assessor's Office this week.
On Monday, the Valley County Board of Equalization ordered assessor Karen Campbell to send out 1,038 reassessments in McCall and 364 reassessments to residential properties in Cascade.
This is the third round of assessments for the McCall property owners.
The assessments are for improved city residential properties in the two cities.
The McCall properties will see a 20 percent increase in assessment. The Cascade properties will receive a 30 percent increase in assessment.
Property owners receiving the new round of assessments will have until Aug. 6 to appeal the assessments to the board of equalization. The deadline for those appeals to be heard by the board of equalization, which is composed by Valley County commissioners, is Aug. 10.
The county is working its way through about 2,900 appeals already this year, which is a record for assessment appeals to the county. Last year the county had 601 appeals of property assessments, which was thought to be the record then.
The Idaho State Tax Commission informed the board last week that the county's assessment was out of compliance and that assessments needed to be higher in order for the county to comply with the tax code that requires assessments be within low percent of the market value.
The tax commission said about 2,700 properties in McCall north of the Subway restaurant and residential properties in Cascade need to be increased in order to get the county's assessment into compliance.
The board of equalization ordered the assessor to reassess properties north of Donnelly a couple of weeks ago. Those assessments drew further attention from the tax commission.
"When we adjusted values on the second round of notices, instead of trending land values down by a factor as suggested by the state tax commission, the land tables were refigured and adjusted downward," Campbell said. "In doing this, the end result showed that the city's improved residential property to be out of compliance with Idaho code."
The tax commission ran ratio reports on specific areas to see where the county was out of compliance with the state tax code, Campbell said.
The reassessments were evaluated by the state tax commission to see if they will bring the county into compliance with the tax code.
The reports showed that improved city residential properties have a median ratio of 87.5 percent, which is 2.5 percent below compliance.
However, the tax commission also runs a confidence level report that showed an 80 percent confidence number that gives the county a passing grade on its assessment this year when factored with the 87.5 percent median ratio.
"The decision to make this correction was ultimately the board of equalization's," Campbell said. "I am pleased that they chose to do it, as it gives the property owner the right to appeal."
The board of equalization could have chosen to allow the tax commission to fix the problem without the option of appeal by the property owners. The commission would have likely raised assessments to 100 percent of market value.
"If the state tax commission had done the change, it would have been, more likely, to 100 percent and there would have been no appeal period," Campbell said. "The taxpayers would have not found out about the change in value until they received their tax bill in November."
