Fighting the good fight

This past week, Craig and I had an interesting day. We appeared before the board of equalization and the county assessors to fight our 2008 property taxes. This is after two appeals to our tax bill and we were fully prepared to go to lawyers if needed. Let me back up a bit.

The entire city where our cabin is located, received their 2008 property taxes in the middle of last year. All was normal. The familiar bill came in the mail. What was not familiar, was the assessed value of our property. It doubled. In one year. In a downward market. While the entire economy entered a plummeting housing crisis. In fact, the entire city's housing values magically doubled or even tripled in 2008. And we, along with everyone we knew, were going to fight their tax bill.

Things got so bad, that the assessors office could not keep up. When the bill came due, the assessors office said we were to pay 75% of the tax bill and that we would resolve the bill after we met with the board. If we didn't convince the board that our property was not the value they thought, then we would pay the remaining 25%. If we did convince them, then we would get a refund/partial refund.

So, we met with the board last week. Craig had put together a very convincing argument that our property was not the value that the assessors thought it was. In addition, we refinanced in 2007 and were required to have an appraisal done, and our 2008 taxes were based off of 2007 values (yeah, that makes sense, right?). We had proof in our hands that the assessed value was really wrong. The assessors value had actually come in about $70,000 above our appraisal from 2007. The reality is that there is NO way we could sell the cabin for what the assessors claim the property is worth. No way. One of the reasons our property taxes soared this past year was because the assessors did a blanket assessment of land values and increased our land value by 900%. That is not a typo. Talk about a crooked local government. On our first appeal, the assessors did a small blanket reduction of the land value for everyone on our street, which was still 700% higher than last year. Everyone's land value on our street was assessed as the exact same and was reduced the exact same. All land is equal, right? Apparently according to the assessors.

We sent back our appeal for the second time, and the assessors replied with a "thank you very much, but uh, no thank you." Our taxes were the same. By this time, we had been fighting our bill for about six months and it was the end of the year. We had to pay 75% of our tax bill on steroids. Plus, now we had to prepare to present before the board of equalization.

Fast forward to March and our board date was set. In the end, the assessors matched our 2007 appraisal, but not because they lowered our land value. Nope, they had assessed our house as complete, and if you've been following this blog for a little while, then you know full well that the cabin is anything but finished. The biggest problem is that we don't have a kitchen, and those are pricey, so we have waited. And it worked in our favor.

Our land value is still 700% higher than it was last year. We didn't have someone come out and review the land, to prove that we can't build on 50% of the land, since uh, 20% is underwater and another 30% is a cliff, the assessors claim that we have to keep the new assessed value. No proof, no reduction.

Craig and I actually walked away very happy with the final assessment. He worked very hard on our appeal and presented it very well. So well in fact, that the assessors didn't even rebuttal. They did push around the board of equalization, which isn't procedure, but we stopped fighting once our appraisal was matched.

This entire fight was unfair and smelled of bad government the entire time. More people have fought and lost, than won in this fight. We were definitely in the minority on this one.

But it sure feels good to fight the good fight. And win.