Commercial taxpayers await new assessments

Published 11:01 am Tuesday, February 21, 2012

About a thousand commercial property owners will get their first look at their reassessed property tax values.

Mower County is in the early stages of completing new property tax values for all commercial properties in Mower County, meaning most — if not all — commercial property owners will see changes for better or worse on spring tax statements for 2013.

County Assessor Rich Peterson said it’s too early to determine if most properties saw increases or decreases, and he’ll know more when the notices are mailed out in March.

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“Could there be a significant change? Depends,” Peterson said. “We’ve had some values where they’ve actually gone down. We’ve had some values that have gone up significantly.”

The need for a mass reappraisal came after county staff noticed discrepancies in commercial property values, according to Peterson. The county board hired Vanguard Appraisals Inc. to complete the assessments, partially because Peterson’s office doesn’t have enough staff to complete the process in a timely manner.

“The board wanted this done in a relatively short period of time,” Peterson said. “For my staff, number one, we just didn’t have the number of bodies to throw at this big a project.”

Though Commissioner Jerry Reinartz said the decision was made before he was elected, he said hiring an outside firm to do it all at once was likely the right thing to do.

“I think the mass appraisal of all the properties was probably the most equitable,” he said, adding it will be fair for all property owners to get new notices at once. Reinartz owns Reinartz Appraisals.

Reinartz said values are typically based on improvements or deterioration in the property and sales of similar properties.

 

‘There’s so much difference’

It’s been many years since a mass appraisal was done for commercial properties in Mower County or Austin, but Peterson said it’s not unheard of.

Commissioner Jerry Reinartz, said the city of Austin re-assessed all residential properties in the 1970s. Peterson and his staff reappraised much of the residential property in small towns on their own recently.

Commercial properties are a different animal.

Peterson said assessing commercial properties is more complex than residential because there’s such a wide variety of property types, from stores like Shopko, Target and Wal-Mart to ma and pa shops to warehouses.

“There’s so much difference,” he said. “It gets much more difficulty just because of the wide variety. You go ahead and look at residential: You got houses. A lot of the houses don’t vary a lot.”

 

Watch for notices

Peterson said property owners must be sure to pay attention to spring tax notices, so they can bring questions forward early in the process,

“One of the concerns we have is people not paying attention to their notices,” Peterson.

Question about values have to be addressed in spring or early summer. By fall, there’s little to nothing the board or assessors can do on values.

“Do it in the spring of the year,” Peterson said. “That’s what we’re after. You get into the fall and our hands get tied quick.”

After values are mailed to taxpayers in mid-March, Vanguard will host meetings for property owners to discuss concerns or questions with their assessment. The county board of equalization will be held around June as another point for business owners to discuss valuations.

“Vanguard will be here to run those meetings the first part of April,” Peterson said.

Peterson and other county officials are urging business owners to take advantage of the meetings when Vanguard is present, since the company did the valuations.

“We’re really trying to stress for the commercial property [owners] — talk to Vanguard,” he said. “Vanguard did this work. They inspected the properties. They know their rationale.”

Peterson said people should bring as much information as possible, like income and expense statements for the appraisers to look at.

“Just don’t come in and say ‘My value went up,’” Peterson said. “We know your value went up. … Have something more than that.”

The more information people have, the more Vanguard and Peterson’s staff can do with the values. Vanguard already have much of the information, like measurements, ratings and classifications on properties that were used for the initial assessment. For the appraisers to come to a new conclusion, Peterson said they’ll need more information.

“If you think your value is too high, you better give some information that we don’t have,” Peterson said.