This year an unprecedented number of 1,938 [one-thousand nine-hundred and thirty-eight] Garfield County residents sent in forms in hopes to adjust their property valuations after a significant spike. The most since 2009. KDNK’s Hattison Rensberry spoke with Garfield County Assessor Jim Yellico about how his office handled the influx of requests.
"Yellico: We're always prepared for it. That's our job. We've got a good staff of appraisers and admin that are ready to handle calls. 'cause we, we get lots and lots of phone calls and most of the time if, if they're calling about taxes, 'cause that's what most people are concerned about is their property taxes. Then we explain to them that the valuation's just part of the, of the process and that. Their taxes may or may not go up depending on what the governments do. And all we do in our office is focus on value, so then we can talk to them more about the value of their property and the market value of their property, what houses are, what they're selling for, and we explain the calendar to them that we're actually working on an assessment on an appraisal date behind us. Like, back in June 30th, 2022. So once you explain the process, a lot of times people don't appeal 'cause then they understand. But if there is a disagreement on the actual valuation of their property, then that's how we handle it. And we handle 'em all the same. We talk to 'em first, and then we go through and start looking at comparable properties.
Rensberry: What was the most common solution that your team saw this year with that spike in requests?
Yellico: So of the 1,938 appeals that we had, we denied 1,237 of them, and we adjusted the value of 701 of them. And then there were some protests that were withdrawn. We have over 28,000 properties that we valued and sent out notices, evaluations for, they can appeal further if they don't like the decision from our office. And that goes to the county board of equalization and we had 204 county Board of equalization cases. So that gives the, the petitioner the, that gives the property owner an opportunity to go in front of a board and explain why they think their value should be lower. And we just show them the comps for the property. And a lot of times we, we can even work out an agreement before they go to the county board of equalization in front of the board. But for the ones that went, um, they had the county board of equalization adjusted 69 and they denied 36 of them. We came to an agreement on 63 of them, and then 32 others withdrew. The way that the state has this set up is to give property owners the most amounts of rights as possible. So you, the first thing you do get do is appeal at the assessor level. So that's in my office. After that, you can go to the county board of Equalization, which they just finished. If you don't like the result of the County Board of Equalization hearing, you have three options. You can appeal further to the Board of Assessment Appeals, and that's just a board of two or three appraisers, usually in Denver, and they'll. Listen to your case and make a decision based on that. If you don't go to the b a A, you can go to a binding arbitration where you present your case and we present our case in front of an arbitrator. And then for matters that aren't just pure valuation, you can go, you can appeal and try and get on the court of appeals. So go to district court. Now we have a couple cases that it looked like they're gonna go to the Board of Assessment Appeals. That's it, like two.
Rensberry: What was the response towards your staff and you during this process from community members? Were people keeping it civil? Was it a little bit tense?
Yellico: Oh, it was very, very civil. Very civil. The, the only, the only time it gets intense is when people start, Complaining about their taxes and that that's more like a, a government rant than a valuation rant. But no, our, our staff is amazing at talking to, talking to people. We do such a good job explaining the process and people get an opportunity to learn more about it. 'cause it's a complicated process. Obviously 25,000 people aren't gonna call us, but we do get a lot of phone calls and it's very civil. I get lots and lots of compliments. If we get the value wrong, we're always trying to fix it. So there's no motivation for us to have high values. We're just trying to come up with the correct value. So if someone had information about their property that we didn't know about, then once we find out about it, it's really easy to fix. But at the end of the day, this is just an opinion of value and our opinion is just as valid as. A property owner's opinion and we value their opinion as well. So it's, it's a really civil conversation and a lot of times once people learn that our whole process, it gets audited every year by the state, and we pass that audit every year. So the, the number one thing would be that the assessor's office is just part of the property taxation formula. So we are coming up with the correct value first. The next thing would be the amount of money that a government needs to provide services. So they need to figure out what their budget needs to be, and then when you do the math of how much valuation is out there and how much money they need, that's what figures out the tax rate. That, and that's called the mill levy. And just because values go up doesn't necessarily mean your taxes have to go up at the same rate because those mill levees are able to go down. And that's, that's the number one thing we tell people all the time. Your taxes aren't gonna go up just because your value went up. I mean, they're, they're gonna go up a little bit, but they don't have to go up the same percentage. 'cause governments have the opportunity to lower their tax rate."
