Cornelius leaders are asking Mecklenburg County to halt work on considering appeals to last year's property revaluation until officials can address some issues raised by town residents. But some leaders have voiced concerns about the request.

In a Monday letter, Cornelius Mayor Jeff Tarte wrote the town's board of commissioners "urgently requests that a moratorium be immediately put into place on processing further revaluation appeals until all affected citizens are assured of due process, fair and equal treatment and adequate information to make informed decisions and present meaningful appeal petitions."

The letter said the board has been receiving complaints for months from residents about the revaluation.

The letter was addressed to Mecklenburg commissioners Chair Harold Cogdell and Jim Barnett, who is chair of the Board of Equalization and Review, a citizens' panel that considers formal appeals of property values.

In an e-mail sent to commissioners this morning, Assessor Garrett Alexander said he planned to talk today with other county administrators about the issue and would send the board more information later.

But, Alexander wrote, "the appeals process must run its course, and the BOCC is not provided the authority to stop it, or to give special consideration to some groups while the majority of the county citizens are treated differently."

Mecklenburg reset property values in 2011 for the first time in eight years. A majority of property values rose, but many others fell or remained the same.

Many residents questioned the reappraisal even before the new values were mailed out, particularly because home prices had fallen throughout the county in recent years. The county says it factored the sales in the new values, continuing to revise the new assessments as new data arrived in late 2010.

In September, Alexander and an official with the N.C. Department of Revenue told commissioners that analyses conducted by the state and county indicated the process used to reset property values this year was "sound." The reports showed that local property assessments on average are slightly less than sales prices.

The county received about 41,000 challenges to the revaluation, and had considered about two-thirds of the requests as of early December.

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