These June days are the longest in the year and Thursday’s June meeting of the Dade County Commission stretched out to meet them. With the fiscal year 2019 budget process well underway—the first public hearing is at 5 p.m. next Thursday, June 14—it was a marathon event attended by many of the county department heads, some of whom spoke. We will break it up here for reporting purposes, but let’s start today with one of them, Paula Duvall (left).
Ms. Duvall is chief appraiser for the tax assessor’s office, and her appearance before the commission at the June 7 meeting had a take-the-bull-by-the-horns note as she preemptively explained a tax valuation adjustment she said affected about 34 percent of the residential housing sector. “You can’t always go little by little every year,” she said.
She began by explaining that her department is charged by the state with assessing properties for taxation as close to true market value as possible, and that Georgia monitors it carefully to make sure that happens. “Our office is very thoroughly audited,” she said.
Ms. Duvall said that a problem had emerged with last year’s figures comparing tax valuation with sales price. “Our values were way lower than what these properties actually sold for,” she said.
After looking at all the factors that affect the taxable valuable of a house, what became evident was that the assessor’s office had been undervaluing houses with vinyl or aluminum siding. Therefore, the weight given in the valuation equation to such siding was adjusted upwards. “Once we made that change, all our sales ratio numbers were right in line,” said Ms. Duvall. “There’s a lot of evidence that shows that just by making that one change, that’s where the problem was.”
Questioned afterwards, Ms. Duvall elaborated that there had been about 60 homes with vinyl siding sold last year so her office had had a sizable chunk of sales to study. “When we pulled our sales ratios,” she said, “our values were extremely under what those properties sold for.”
Therefore, she said, the exterior-wall-with-vinyl-siding factor had been increased. “Vinyl siding was at a factor of 1,” she said. “We changed that factor to 1.25. That changed the dollar per square foot of your vinyl siding homes.”
Plugged into the value equation, said Ms. Duvall, that changed the tax assessment valuation of some Dade homes by as much as $20,000.
Ms. Duvall said she’d already heard from some taxpayers about the change, and she invited any others with questions to come by her office. She’ll be happy to show them numbers, market analysis or any other backup data they’d like to see. “We’ve got it all down there,” she said.
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