Board calls special meeting to address topic

By Jim Lisk, Editor

Tuesday, January 13, 2009 — In a special called meeting on Monday night, Stanly County commissioners grappled with what to do with the revaluation of property that had been under study since April 2006.

Stanly County Tax Administrator Rick Johnson reviewed the process that his office had used in reaching the appraisals of the 37,000 parcels of real property in Stanly County and the revaluation notices that were mailed on Dec. 24.

Monday had been the first day to challenge the revaluation, and according to Johnson, his office had been busy all day hearing appeals.

Overall, Johnson said property values in Stanly County had been increased by 17 percent, with the median residential value increase being 10.6 percent. Lake property saw the biggest increases, going up 55 percent on Lake Tillery.

This was not the first major jump in lake property values. From 1985 to 1993, the values went up 250 percent.

In discussions regarding how to handle the current dilemma, the commissioners discussed the possibilities of delaying the revaluation increases and reducing the tax rate, which is currently 67 cents per $100 valuation.

One suggestion discussed was returning to the 2005 valuation, which if done, would require a tremendous amount of data re-entry into two databases maintained by Johnson’s office. One database is used to bill property owners and a second is for updating property valuations. This second database is constantly being changed as properties are bought, sold and revaluated.

While the task to revert back to 2005 would be arduous, County Manager Andy Lucas advised he thought the job could be done.

“I’m very confidant we can do it. It won’t be easy, but we’ll just have to roll up our sleeves and get it done,” Lucas said.

However, Michael Brown of the North Carolina Department of Revenue suggested it was too late to delay or revert back to the 2005 valuation.

“If there was to be a delay, it should have been done by Dec. 31. Our office is of the opinion that it is now too late and that the reappraisal should go on,” Brown said.

“Our records show that $589,000 of taxpayer money has already been spent on this appraisal and the cost to revert would be considerable.”

Brown also commented that the county’s software packages were old and the re-entry of data would be a tough job.

“This would be very time consuming for any transaction and everything that goes along with it must be re-established. There can be absolutely no deviation,” Brown said.

“And nobody knows what the cost of re-doing would be.”

Brown also said of the 27 counties doing revaluations in 2009, only two, Mecklenburg and Person, had postponed their revaluations.

Commission Chairman Tony Dennis took exception to the discussion and spoke to the tough economic times and taking care of the people of Stanly County.

“We’re not in a recession, we’re in a depression and I don’t see it getting any better any time soon. It’s like we’re sitting in an ivory tower looking for money from people that don’t have any,” Dennis said.

“Furthermore, there may be people sitting here tonight that might not have a job in 90 days. We’re in times we’ve never seen before with the collapse of our entire economy.”

Following the discussions regarding a possible reversion to 2005 valuations, Lucas presented a number of possible scenarios and their impacts on the county tax revenues. All showed revenue shortfalls within a year or two.

The commissioners took no action on Monday night, but will study the scenarios presented by Lucas and decide what to do at their next regularly scheduled meeting on Jan. 20.

“Regardless of what you do, you’re going to have to make some really tough choices,” Lucas said.

Speaking to their job at hand, Dennis said: “We’ve got to try and look into the future and try and help the people we’re elected to serve.”

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