A study commissioned by Warren County to test the values at the heart of the property reassessment found the data to be “quite good” and meet International Association of Assessing Officers (IAA) standards “in nearly all cases.”
The ratio study was completed by assessment expert Alan Dornfest, who serves as the chief assessor for the State of Idaho and regularly performs reassessment consulting work in Pennsylvania.
This marks the second ratio study completed on Warren County’s assessment data. The first, also completed by Dornfest, resulted in a report that justified the need for the reassessment. A second study has been a part of the county’s planning since the start of this process.
Commissioner Dan Glotz said during the August meeting that he’s hoping that everyone disputing those values has filed an appeal.
“That will be your time to offer the information you have to dispute and state your case on what you believe the value correctly is,” he said.
The report examined sales for a total of 720 properties of all kinds in a total of 38 neighborhoods across from Warren County.
Dornfest acknowledged the challenge of sample size inherent in the review.
Neighborhoods with less than five sales were deemed “insufficient for analysis.” Sample sizes for the remaining neighborhoods range from five sales to 49.
“Although there are difficulties developing accurate analyses in many of the neighborhoods because of small sample sizes,” Dornfest concluded, “my overall conclusion is that the new proposed assessed values for the categories and neighborhoods analyzed are, for the most part, quite good, meeting all applicable IAAO standards in nearly all cases.”
The analysis also looked at the overall increase in valuation - 779 percent - between 1989 and today.
Dornfest stated that sale data shows a 621 percent increase but said the discrepancy “may reflect new construction or change of use, which may be more common in the population and less likely to be reflected in sales used in the studies.
“In any case, the main use of the comparison in the context of this analysis is to ensure that the assessment changes are not more pronounced in the sales – in that case, the results would have been considered probably non representative. That issue (sales chasing) is clearly not the case with regard to the current reassessment program.”
Commissioner Tricia Durbin stressed that the process of reassessment is “set and determined for us.”
“Our biggest role in this is whether we vote on doing a reassessment and choosing a third party,” she said. “The process is already laid out.”
There are only two firms in the state licensed to facilitate this process. Warren County evaluated proposals from both and selected Vision Government Solutions.
“The point of what the reassessment was about,” Solicitor Nathaniel Schmidt said during the meeting, “was not any person’s particular value of their property but whether some people were getting taxed more than others as a side effect of some people’s values (being) more than others.”
He added that the “job” of a reassessment is to “make sure everyone pays their fair share” while stressing that there has been a “lot of effort to make sure Vision has done their job competently.”