Officials react to county assessment hikes

Assessment hikes

The cost to run the county is not going to go up by those amounts. When those assessments go up, our levy quite frankly may be able to go down and may be able to go down quite significantly into next year.”

Garry Seyb, Lee County Supervisor Chair

LEE COUNTY – Assessments letters that were sent out in the mail this week have the phones at the Lee County Assessor’s office ringing… a lot.

Assessment increases are happening all over the area, but as Assessor Patti Meierotto said, they are also happening across the state and the nation.

Meierotto said residents are seeing increases from 20 to 45 percent and it’s the sales market from 2021 and 2022 that are driving the increases.

“With the county being in the financial state it is at the moment, a lot of taxpayers believe we are raising assessments to get more taxes,” Meierotto said.

“But we are only the first part of the tax formula and you don’t pay taxes on that value until September of 2024.”

That means the county won’t see any potential increased revenue off the assessments until fiscal year 2025.

Lee County Supervisor Chairman Garry Seyb took that a step further and said Monday that residents may not see higher tax bills despite the higher assessments.

“I want everybody to understand that an increased assessment does not necessarily compute directly dollar-for-dollar to a raise in your taxes. That’s the message I’m trying to get out to people,” Seyb said.

“They need to understand that the assessors are going by the letter of the law and the rules that are out there.”

He said some assessments have changed from agriculture to residential and that’s a lot of the increase for some. He said some have gone from residential or agricultural to commercial and that’s part of the increase.

Seyb said Lee County Beacon is a good way to see what the changes are and the new handbook that assessors are required to go by is causing diligence in the assessments.

He then said the county board will have to look at what the levy will do.

“The cost to run the county is not going to go up by those amounts. When those assessments go up, our levy quite frankly may be able to go down and may be able to go down quite significantly into next year.”

Meierotto said the state formula requires assessments to be set based on market value.

“The market dictates these rates and, even with our increased values for 2024 and 2025, we still aren’t at 100% of market value.” Meierotto said.

“We are getting a lot of phone calls and most people say they understand it, they don’t like it, but they understand it.”

She said the bottom line is that assessments are based on market value including agriculture property. Dwellings are assessed at market value, but land is based on a five-year productivity formula that comes from the state based on reports they get on crop sales.

“Ag land and buildings went up about 32% because of how well corn and beans have done over the past several years. That was reassessed as well,” she said.

Odd years are re-evaluation years, but Meierotto said there were also some changes in the even years, but those have to do with construction and demolition improvements. But during the odd years, the state will come and look at the assessments, if the county isn’t in compliance, they will make a correction.

“To be totally honest, I could still get one of those,” Meierotto said. “Because we aren’t at 100% market value yet. "Iowa Code mandates that our assessments must be valued at 100% market value in odd-numbered years. If an assessor does not increase values and the data shows that they should have, the Iowa Department of Revenue will increase them in the fall of 2023, which is called a state equalization order."

Property owners may call and request an informal review now through April 25, 2023 or they may file a petition with the Board of Review from now through April 30, 2023. However, with April 30, 2023 falling on a Sunday, petitions will be accepted through May 1, 2023. Petitions for Board of Review may be found online on the county website or on the Iowa Department of Revenue’s website.

If a property owner prefers, a petition can be mailed to them.

Seyb said he’s asking everyone to take a deep breath and look at the situation and, if they have any questions, they are encouraged to contact the assessor’s office to explain the assessments.

For more information, visit any of these links:
Lee County Beacon – https://beacon.schneidercorp.com/Application.aspx?AppID=177&LayerID=2207&PageTypeID=2&PageID=1132
Lee County Board of Review petitions – https://www.leecounty.org/pview.aspx?id=20859&catid=25
Iowa Department of Revenue – https://paab.iowa.gov/