St. Louis County completes informal assessment conferences
St. Louis County recently completed informal conferences on appeals of property tax assessments.
The total of 4,298 sessions this year is about 400 short of 4,683, the average of informal conferences in the five reassessment years in this decade. But this year’s total was almost less than half the number of sessions – 8,368 – in 2007.
Martina Linck, spokeswoman for the county’s revenue department, said 2007 “was the year assessor caught up with fair market value. People were not happy. They were used to underassessment.”
This year’s total is about what the staff expected, she said.
The total reduction of assessed value as a result of this year’s conferences was not available.
On Tuesday, the assessment appeals process becomes formal with the board of equalization starting to hear taxpayer objections to their assessments.
The board will meet from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays from Tuesday to July 30 at 11130 Old St. Charles Road, St. Ann. The sessions will be in the Northwest Square shopping center just south of Northwest Plaza shopping mall.
At the same times from Aug. 3 to Aug. 28, the hearings will be 129 Concord Plaza shopping center, at South Lindbergh Boulevard and Baptist Church Road, south St. Louis County. The sessions will run until the end of the month or until the board concludes all hearings on its schedule, whichever comes first.
Taxpayers have until July 13 to file an appeal.
Appeal forms are available:
> At the board’s office on the 2nd floor of the County Administration Building, 41 South Central Avenue, Clayton.
> On the Internet at http://revenue.stlouisco.com
Property owners can call the board office at 314-615-7195 for the forms.
Since the County now claims to have “caught up with fair values,” let’s hope that the County stays current with fair market values and reduce assessments as property values fall. My guess is the County won’t.
Gotta squeeze as much cash out of the proles as possible. Even if it means jacking up home values. City and county are both practicing unfair valuations of peoples property. The result? People will move to places that are more fair. Net loss for the region. That’s what corruption will get ya!
Come on out to St. Charles. Our assessor gets the fact prices have gone down. I hear 8-10% drop in assessed valuation here.
The couty already adjusted property values to reflect the drop in values. Personally, our value was adjusted down by $30,000+/-. I believe they had a drop of 10% on average.
This is insanity. How much did it cost us to conduct those 4,000 plus interviews? The rented space, the salaries of the interviewers, the salaries of the adjusters who review the information, the postage to send out the new assessments. And for what? So the citizens can argue with their county that their house is worth LESS than the county says? Is that what I want my county tax spent on? I want to send money to the county so that they can try to convince me that my house is worth more than I want it to be worth for taxing purposes.
If my assessment were based on the income that I reported to the state in my tax return in April, there would be no argument. And my proportion of the county tax burden would be borne more fairly by each individual tax payer. No one would argue that they were being unfairly taxed because the tax would be based on money they actually had… not some imaginary value of something they may have bought 30 years ago, and whose price today bears no relationship to the money they have available to them today.
But that would be rational and sane. We don’t want to have anything to do with sanity, now do we.