County completes BOE process

On July 15, Bonner County completed the Board of Equalization hearings for this year.

We had a total of about 523 appeals filed.

Our staff was able to resolve about 223 appeals with taxpayers because we found that we had made errors on square footage, land size or something else that affected the assessment.

 Also in many cases the appeal was resolved when the taxpayer understood our process and saw comparable sales values from 2008.

Of the 300 or so that did go to a hearing, that number represented about 184 citizens or businesses because some had multiple properties.

The Board upheld our assessment values or suggested changes on 84 percent of the appeals.

Since there are about 45,000 parcels in the county the number of appeals was less than 1 percent, which represents an overwhelming understanding of the assessment values.

We are always looking back to the last year’s sales prices when we set values so we will be looking at 2009 values for the 2010 assessments.

All indications are that real estate sales prices are lower now than last year.

If that is the case then the total assessed value for the county in 2010 could be lower.

As always, it is our goal to keep assessments as low as possible consistent with the law and to have equity and fairness in values.