UPDATE: City-wide Reappraisal

The City is working toward concluding a reappraisal of residential and commercial properties in the City.  Such reappraisals are required by State law when the community’s Common Level of Appraisal (the values upon which property taxes are assessed) falls to 85% of actual market value or exceeds 115% of market value.  The CLA now falls into this “need to reappraise” category due to recent increases in housing values across the region.

Fundamentally, a reappraisal “trues up” the current assessed value of the properties in a community to their actual market value.  This process establishes a fairness for all property tax payers based upon the examination of each and every property in the community by experts. 

The process is designed to be revenue neutral from the standpoint of municipal taxes raised.  Very generally speaking for Municipal taxes the individual appraised values of properties will very likely go up but tax rates will come down, generating the same amount of tax revenue for the municipality.  Of course, that does not account for any increases in budgets and the needed tax revenue to support those budgets approved by voters during the reappraisal project period. 

The City hired Tyler Technologies to conduct the reappraisal which typically takes about two years to complete. According to Blane Bowlin who is managing the project for Tyler the limitations on visits to properties that came about do to the Covid-19 pandemic response delayed the project schedule but they still hope to complete it in late this year or very early next. 

Bowlin reports that all commercial properties in the City have been visited and most of the residential properties as well.  The City Council has granted Tyler permission to continue with the visitation of residential properties which had been suspended during the peak of the Covid-19 outbreak.

Residents who have yet to have their property reviewed can expect the visitations to begin again in mid-October.  The City and Tyler are very sensitive to concerns of residents about inviting the data-gathering staff into their homes.  If residents prefer the interviews and tours can be handled “through the door” rather than having the appraisal staff enter the home.   

After all of the data is gathered through visitation or survey, Tyler will enter that data and analyze it to determine the new assessed values for each property.  Property owners will then have a period of time to contest those valuations before they become the new assessed values for the properties and the City. 

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