March 29, 2024

Union County Assessor proposes ‘reval’ of residential and ag properties

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The Union County Assessor’s office recently completed a reevaluation of business, industrial and multi-residential properties in Union County. Now it proposes to do the same for residential and agricultural properties.

Assessor Mindy Schaefer said the current valuation of properties is not uniform and therefore unfair during the Feb. 10 Union County Board of Supervisors meeting. She said a reevaluation should be completed every 10 to 15 years. It has been 35 years since the last one in Union County,

Schaefer said according to a formula that determines if a particular county’s assessed values are appropriate based on current market value, Union County’s assessments are too low. The Iowa Department of Revenue requires the assessments fall in the 95 to 105% range. Union County assessments are currently measuring at 91%.

The assessor’s office must correct this before the IDR steps in. If this were to happen, the IDR would raise valuations to 100%.

The county has two options before them. The assessor’s office can simply raise valuations 4% accross the board to bring the total within the appropriate range or can conduct a reevaluation of each individual property.

Schaefer said the reevaluation is the most equitable solution because her office has found that while valuations of higher end properties — $100,000 or more — are too low, they have also seen property values on the other end of the scale are running higher than they should.

The process of reevaluating each residential property in Union County would cost approximately $600,000. Schaefer said the best choice would be to use Vanguard Appraisals because their data would integrate with the county’s software. If another company was used, the county would still need to pay Vanguard to coordinate the data with the computer system.

There are very few companies that are capable of completing the reevaluation in a timely manner, Schaefer said. An in-house reevaluation of properties by the assessor’s staff would take around 10 years according to Schaefer, adding that with three people in the office, they were able to do about 300 evaluations last year.

Supervisor Rick Friday questioned if it would be more cost effective to have the assessor’s staff do the amount of reevaluations they can handle and hire the outside company to do the rest.

Schaefer rejected this notion for two reasons. First, for the valuations to be fair and uniform, it is best that they are all done by the same entity. Secondly, using an outside company for the residential properties will free the assessor’s office to concentrate on the agricultural ones.

The $600,000 cost would be due at the end of the evaluations, approximately January 2024 if Schaefer’s ideal timeline can be followed or later if it takes more time to raise the money.

Vangard has offered to complete the evaluations without a 100% payout at the end of the process with the remaining balance incurring a 3% interest rate.

Schaefer proposed that the money needed for this project can be acquired more quickly if the cost is spread across more than one county taxing agency.

The assessor’s office could foot the entire $600,000 bill, the county could split the cost with them or the assessor’s office, the county, and each city and school district involved could be asked to participate.

The benefits to each taxing agency are, first and foremost, that the assessments would now be uniform, and secondly, if Schaefer’s predictions based on the recently completed business reval are bourne out, the valuations would raise by approximately 10%.

The raise in valuations would not automatically equal a raise in taxes. Each taxing agency would then decide if it wanted to keep its levy the same, lower the levy to keep the taxes the same, or a combination of the two to create more revenue without putting the entire 10% on the property owners.

Schaefer reminded the board that some assessments are currently too high, and those valuations and the subsequent taxes would go down.

If all of the taxing agencies in the county participated in financing the reevaluation, Union County’s share would be around $200,000. Schaefer said that the county could conceivably recoup that amount in one year if it did not adjust its levy.

3% raise

The board passed a resolution to increase the salaries of most Union County elected officials by 3% after a recommendation of a 4% raise by the compensation board. The salary bump affects the Union County Sheriff, Auditor, Attorney, Recorder and Treasurer. The board declined a raise for itself for the second year in a row.

Supervisor Ron Riley said the board was trying to keep the “tax ask” from the county residents the same as last year and added that although it was comfortable with no raise for the supervisors this year, that would not mean they will not accept one in the future.

“We can’t do that forever,”Riley said, noting that their successors would need to be paid fairly. “We’re not getting any younger.”

Public hearing

A public hearing will be held 10 a.m. Feb. 24 at the Union County Courthouse board room, 300 N. Pine St., for the proposed FY 2021 county property tax dollars. This will be the first of two public hearings due to a new state mandate.