Don't give up on tax fight

Today (Sept. 11) I called the Bonner County Assessor's office and asked if I would be able to protest my taxes. I was politely told that no I could not, but that I could get a form from Marie Scott and send it to Boise.

She gave me the number of the State Board of Tax Appeals (334-7733) and told me to call them. I called Boise and the pleasant man at that tax office asked if I had filed an appeal in June (yes), and did I have a hearing (no). Yes, he said that is being discussed by the Attorney General's office because the lawyers in Boise can't decide if the citizens of Bonner County are being taxed without right of appeal.

He said we should be reassessed by next June; however we must pay our taxes this December.

I don't know what happened to the rest of my fellow taxpayers, but my property taxes went up 100 percent in 2005 and another 100 percent in 2006.

Somehow, I feel this is unfair. The way I see it is our local assessor's office couldn't believe so many of us complained about our assessments, and just threw up their hands and said: "We're right, you taxpayers are wrong.

The commissioners said: "We can't hear all those appeals, so we'll just roll taxes back to the 2005 rates." The state said to the commissioners: "You can't do that."

The commissioners said, 'give us something to go home with,' so they got a 5 percent decrease in 2006 assessments. So I guess my taxes only went up 195 percent in two years and I should be happy by what a good job my county officials did.

Maybe if we over-taxed payers call Boise and do file state tax appeals, we just might get some attention from the powers that be. Perhaps there is an over-taxed payer lawyer in the county who could set up an escrow account into which we could deposit our December taxes and then see what happens with our reassessments in June.

NANCY KIENHOLZ

Hope