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| BY PAUL LIVIUS |
State Auditor begins
Audit of Jackson
County Tax Increases
The
Jackson County Legislature has approved a resolution inviting the Missouri
State Auditor’s Office to “conduct a full audit to examine and evaluate Jackson
County's property assessment processes.”
Missouri State
Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick has initiated a review to
investigate complaints regarding
the property assessment process.
Irregularities
in the audit process have been found. The owner of a vacant lot says the
property was valued at $356,270. He does not believe an in-person inspection of
the vacant property took place. That goes against a new state law.
The
State Auditor as begun a comprehensive review as to why Jackson County
continues to see increases in assessed value that are significantly higher than
those other Missouri counties.
Five Eastern Jackson County cities have also formally questioned the assessment process in Jackson County. Those cities are: Raytown, Lee's Summit, Independence, Blue Springs, Grain Valley.
Talk of more Tax Increases
on next Spring’s Raytown Ballot
The word out of Raytown City Hall is that the Mayor has tentative plans to place another tax proposal on next April’s city election. It is also known that the Raytown Park Department is considering placing a renewal of city’s Park Sales Tax on the same ballot. The Park Sales tax is a renewable sales tax with a life of five years. Proceeds from the tax are split between Parks and Recreation and the city’s Storm Sewer maintenance.
Local television commentators have suggested that next April is also a possible time to ask voters to consider a County wide stadium tax to pay for a new major league baseball stadium in the Kansas City area.
The April 2024 election is an off-year time for voting. There would not be any politicians running for office.
The Raytown Report will keep readers up to speed on these stories as the April 2024 election date draws near.
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| INTRODUCTION BY GREG WALTERS |
Raytown Report
The following article
was written by Preston Smith. Mr. Smith served as a member of the Jackson County Board of
Equalization for 14 years. During that time, he heard over 10,000
appeals. Smith
also has 31 years of high-level data analysis experience.
Mr. Smith recently spoke
before the Raytown Board of Aldermen on mistakes and errors he found in the
reassessment process in Jackson County. The Board unanimously agreed to
endorse a Resolution calling for a rollback of property tax increase in Jackson
County.
Jackson County
Legislature requests
State
Auditor to conduct a formal
Audit of Jackson County
On Monday, August 21, the Jackson County
Legislature voted (by a vote of nine YES to one NO) to request an independent
audit by Missouri State Auditor Scott
Fitzpatrick of the current reassessment debacle in Jackson County,
Missouri.
Their goal is to find
a solution to the assessment process used by Jackson County. The Legislator
Auditor for review and options as to what can be done to fix mistakes in
setting residential home values throughout Jackson County.
In his article, Mr. Smith offers some sound solutions to a process that has proven to be unfair and inaccurate.
63 parcels were modified from the $356,270 original value that the County used when the notices were mailed in June, all of those coming from taxpayer appeals. Even though the values in many of these are obviously flawed, there does not seem to be a process of correcting these errors outside of the appeal process.
The question is: Why would someone not appeal if they saw a house that they bought in March 2021 for $11,775, then receiving a tax notice saying the 2 bed, 1 bath 960 sq ft house built in 1940 was now worth $356,270? Of this list of 507 parcels, the owners of 260 did not appeal, even though the average increase for the group was 168 percent from the previous assessment.
Perhaps they didn't get a notice.
The number of egregious errors in the Jackson County assessment has passed a tipping point. New evidence shows that the County Assessor has valued 80-year-old, 600-square-foot homes at more than $350,000. This is not an isolated problem. Thousands of home values are wrong—and wrong badly.
Other new evidence now shows that there may be more than 50,000 taxpayers who did not receive notice of their new assessment. Either that, or the county data is wrong again.
The 2019 assessment was flawed. This assessment is far worse. Here are the new, stunning details of an assessment gone horribly wrong:
Although there were more than 54,000 appeals filed by taxpayers, this spreadsheet is an indication that the number of persons who might have wanted to appeal but couldn't, or didn't because they didn't receive a notice, could be another 50,000. Again, the County's data quality control doesn't work if everybody doesn't appeal.
The County Assessment Department provided me a list that had 267,033 parcels listed that supposedly was used to make the mailing of the notices, but when the duplicates were taken out, there were 252,870. If there are 309,000 parcels in the County, that would mean more than 56,000 taxpayers likely did not receive any notice at all.
This assessment is flawed from top to bottom, and this spreadsheet shows it. Thousands of Jackson County taxpayers were not given notice of this assessment and unless something dramatic is done, they are going to be hit with catastrophic tax bills.
There have been too many mistakes in this assessment. The only fair and equitable way is to freeze residential values at 2021 levels and start over with a 14.9 percent flat increase across the county. (There has already been a flat-rate 25 percent increase applied to commercial parcels in the 2023 assessment.)
The people of Jackson County should not pay higher taxes they do not deserve because of an incompetent, mistake-riddled assessment. The reason for the 14.9 percent increase cap is because I believe there is little to no evidence that the County actually met the state law on informing taxpayers of physical inspections and conducting them properly, and without that proof, it is illegal to increase assessments more than 15 percent.
I ask the County Executive, the Board of Equalization or State Tax Commission intervene to realign the assessments of the taxpayers of Jackson County in order to avoid thousands losing their homes this winter. There are currently three paths to approve this 14.9 percent cap on assessments:
The County Executive has the power, under the County Charter Article III, Section 6, Item 9, to "correct errors in assessment and tax records." With one stroke of the pen, a flat-rate could be set by the County Executive.
The Board of Equalization has the power to enact a countywide "equalization order," which is a legal tool used when there can no longer be fair and equitable assessments based on the current process. That is exactly what we have now: a process for equity that is broken. (See attachment)
Finally, the State Tax Commission has the authority to call upon the Attorney General or prosecuting attorneys in the state to assist in enforcing the property tax laws in the courts. Numerous state laws have been violated in this assessment, ranging from the late notice or lack received by taxpayers, lack of physical inspections and unequal access to appeals. The Commission also has the authority to convene a hearing concerning the assessment of any parcel in the state to ensure that all assessments have been made in compliance with law.
Regardless of which body
takes action, the taxpayers of Jackson County need relief now. Either the
County Executive, Board of Equalization or State Tax Commission should take
immediate action and then convene a task force to make sure the next assessment
is done right.
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