"The 2006 assessments were trended wrong" per the DLGF ... and thus we begin the presentation on Porter County's assessment woes.
The DLGF Commissioner brought 6 members with him for this presentation. Attendance is much lower than last nite's craziness with RDA removal. Interestingly it would appear the elected assessor was too busy to attend too.
We start with some background and terms. Trending is not the same as reassessment. "What happened here was not supposed to happen, especially in the second year of a trending". So our assessor blew it right?
- Most properties were assessed right, and are now at market value. They were supposed to be there two years ago and our assessors played too many games and "cherry picked" to keep them low. Shorewood is still low and will need to be re-assessed for the last two years.
- If most properties are right, why did taxes jump so much? Well frankly that's a bit of a mystery ... the tax rates should have gone done a bunch since valuations went up over 30%. Rates went down only 11% in Center Township.
- The biggie, and for some reason under reported is that the Valparaiso Schools (and Portage Schools) grabbed an extremely high amount of extra cash last year. Can't say I know the politics but it looks like they knew the state was taking over the budgets this year and they needed to be as high as possible going into the new situation.
- Both Valpo and Portage were lean frankly, it was schools that blew the budget. And in Valpo you have no one to blame because the city council doesn't even review the budget set by their appointees. I would say it's time to go to an elected school board.
Commissioner mentions Strongbows, nice advertisement! Next speaker goes right to the jugular, land values require use of sales only. Basically they're building a case that land was assessed incorrectly and applied wrong in 2006 ... Causing massive mess in 2007
Lots of questions from the floor and I had to leave after 2 hours. Will get links from Times and Post writers when they post later tonite. Saw Lakeshore TV there, love to see a video of their interview with DLGF Commissioner.
Let's boil it down. There were some errors and gross negligence by the assessors office. They really need to go, I think both parties are in agreement there. But even if those assessments were perfect, the rates are high, way high for small businesses. They are high mainly due to the schools ... but also because government in general is still growing even though we are in a recession.
