Property Taxes
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By -
I want to bring everyone up to date with my appeal for the property tax assessment I received this year, which drove up my assessment up $25,100 from the year before from $192,900 to $218,100.
After my office visit they did lower “my property only” assessment back down to close to the year before. However, I still was raised up to $208,500. Because of the inability for anyone to use most of my land for anything other than a yard with the flooding, which accrues on a average of six times per year depending on rainfall at a given time, I felt it should be lowered even more. The City of Warsaw knows of my problem and they are working on a lengthy drainage plan to solve some of it for me, along with all of my neighbors on the south side of the railroad off Ranch Road.
In short I lost my appeal on Oct. 5. During that meeting I showed pictures of my land, flooded this summer all around my home on every side, with a 2-acre pond-lake on the lowest portion south of the railroad tracks. I told them how people called me to comment on the lake I had and that brought a chuckle to the room when they all agreed I should be reassessed for lakefront property. I said, “That’s funny huh? But it is not really funny when I can’t go into my yard for days without sinking into the mud.”
The board chairman said, “Well, Mr. Alspaugh, would you sell your home for $208,100?” I replied that I was not wanting to sell my home so that was not the issue. They read a statement and thanked me and I left knowing I’d lost.
When I got the letter a few days later, I looked up properties relating to everyone’s name on the board, to see what they pay and what they own. To my surprise all of them combined pay less per year than me on one home. Not one person even lives in my same tax zone paying the assessment they put on me.
Now my question to the head board member is: “Sir, would you sell all of your three properties combined for what they are assessed for which includes about 17.5 acres and 15 buildings? Current market value of farmland is somewhere around $3,000 Per acre and yours is valued at $9,700 for all 13.41 acres.”
My point is that the assessments of homes and properties in Kosciusko County are way off balance, with the unfair depreciations on older, well-kept and beautiful homes and the much higher assessments on newer same size and condition homes. This alone is costing the county millions every year. You want to know why the county roads are in bad shape? It is because the assessor is reading the laws all wrong.
Indiana changed their laws to current market value assessments, not meaning to have older homes devalued and losing billions of dollars as a result. This state currently derives around $4 billion from properties to maintain 92 counties and our schools.
All of this is slowing new home construction and our entire economy down as well. Why would anyone on a budget build a new home when they can buy an older home, fix it up to like new shape and their taxes will only be one-third of the new home they could have built? The depreciation factor has got to go and we all need to pay based on what our homes are really worth on the market not some strange math someone made up.
Michael Alspaugh
Warsaw, via email[[In-content Ad]]
I want to bring everyone up to date with my appeal for the property tax assessment I received this year, which drove up my assessment up $25,100 from the year before from $192,900 to $218,100.
After my office visit they did lower “my property only” assessment back down to close to the year before. However, I still was raised up to $208,500. Because of the inability for anyone to use most of my land for anything other than a yard with the flooding, which accrues on a average of six times per year depending on rainfall at a given time, I felt it should be lowered even more. The City of Warsaw knows of my problem and they are working on a lengthy drainage plan to solve some of it for me, along with all of my neighbors on the south side of the railroad off Ranch Road.
In short I lost my appeal on Oct. 5. During that meeting I showed pictures of my land, flooded this summer all around my home on every side, with a 2-acre pond-lake on the lowest portion south of the railroad tracks. I told them how people called me to comment on the lake I had and that brought a chuckle to the room when they all agreed I should be reassessed for lakefront property. I said, “That’s funny huh? But it is not really funny when I can’t go into my yard for days without sinking into the mud.”
The board chairman said, “Well, Mr. Alspaugh, would you sell your home for $208,100?” I replied that I was not wanting to sell my home so that was not the issue. They read a statement and thanked me and I left knowing I’d lost.
When I got the letter a few days later, I looked up properties relating to everyone’s name on the board, to see what they pay and what they own. To my surprise all of them combined pay less per year than me on one home. Not one person even lives in my same tax zone paying the assessment they put on me.
Now my question to the head board member is: “Sir, would you sell all of your three properties combined for what they are assessed for which includes about 17.5 acres and 15 buildings? Current market value of farmland is somewhere around $3,000 Per acre and yours is valued at $9,700 for all 13.41 acres.”
My point is that the assessments of homes and properties in Kosciusko County are way off balance, with the unfair depreciations on older, well-kept and beautiful homes and the much higher assessments on newer same size and condition homes. This alone is costing the county millions every year. You want to know why the county roads are in bad shape? It is because the assessor is reading the laws all wrong.
Indiana changed their laws to current market value assessments, not meaning to have older homes devalued and losing billions of dollars as a result. This state currently derives around $4 billion from properties to maintain 92 counties and our schools.
All of this is slowing new home construction and our entire economy down as well. Why would anyone on a budget build a new home when they can buy an older home, fix it up to like new shape and their taxes will only be one-third of the new home they could have built? The depreciation factor has got to go and we all need to pay based on what our homes are really worth on the market not some strange math someone made up.
Michael Alspaugh
Warsaw, via email[[In-content Ad]]
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