Mecklenburg commissioners voted Tuesday to hire Pearson’s Appraisal Service to expand a review to all 1,100 neighborhoods and help guide the county toward a future property revaluation.

Pearson’s, which will be paid between $1.1 million and $1.7 million, found the last, county-managed revaluation in 2011 riddled with mistakes.

“If we need to pay the experts, we need to do it to get it right,” commissioners board chair Pat Cotham said. “The Pearson’s people have proven to be highly skilled, and they were accepted in the community and appreciated.”

The firm will also help county staff write a new revaluation plan, pick a new Board of Equalization and Review and review and recommend improvements to the Mecklenburg Tax Office.

Commissioners also voted to hire Customer Service Solutions of Charlotte for $23,000 to help improve customer relations during post-revaluation appeals, an effort to restore lost public trust.

Under its agreement, Pearson’s will use as many as seven of its appraisers, working with county employees, to identify neighborhoods with major issues beyond those already identified. That 18-week review was based on a sample of 15 percent of neighborhoods.

The company will at least “touch” all neighborhoods and spend more time in ones where they find major inequities, general manager and acting tax assessor Bobbie Shields told the board.

Next, they’ll determine which neighborhoods have minor issues and create a plan to deal with them.

The expanded review is needed after Pearson’s found dozens of flaws in its original review. For nearly two years, taxpayers complained that the revaluation left their property values vastly over-inflated – and that they got little satisfaction from the county’s tax office.

In the wake of mounting controversy, Tax Assessor Garrett Alexander resigned his post, though he still works in the county finance department.

Shields was appointed to fill Alexander’s term until July 1. Tuesday, Shields presented Pearson’s proposal to the board.

Pearson’s and county staff will start “reworking” properties that have pending 2011 appeals with the state Property Tax Commission. It will then consider properties with pending 2012 appeals to the county Board of Equalization and Review.

The firm said it will provide an in-depth review of state appeals as part of the neighborhood reviews and will recommend accurate property values in the county.

The appeals will include meetings with property owners and field visits whenever necessary, Pearson’s said in its proposal.

The firm, based in Wilson, will use the county’s Patriot Computer Assisted Mass Appraisal system to review 2011 property information.

New board members

The previous board approved expanding the review in late November, in an effort to save face and blunt months of criticism directed at commissioners and county staff.

For the current board’s four new members, sworn in Dec. 3, Tuesday night was their first taste of revaluation.

It won’t be their last. After the new values are in, they are certain to feel the heat of owners with overbilled properties demanding a refund back to Jan. 1, 2011.

They’ll also deal with a new set of disgruntled taxpayers whose properties were undervalued and face higher tax bills.

Any refunds would require approval from the state General Assembly, and a debate is expected on whether legislators can constitutionally grant that permission.

Members of Mecklenburg’s legislative delegation have said it’s possible to get the county permission without disrupting revaluation policies in other counties. They are ready to help the county.

But at least one expert has said that any legislation to allow the county to retroactively reset property values or refund taxpayers would violate the state constitution.

“You can’t have special rules for special counties,” Chris McLaughlin, a taxation expert at the UNC School of Government, told the Observer earlier this month.

County Attorney Marvin Bethune is still studying the issue and by Tuesday was undecided on whether the board should ask legislators for assistance.

Commissioner Dumont Clarke said it didn’t matter if commissioners requested help, the Mecklenburg delegation “is going to do whatever they want.”

“They’re probably going to adopt something whether it’s constitutional or not, and leave us to figure out what the next step in the process is,” Clarke said.

Emotional issue

The four new members on the board also got a quick lesson on how emotional the revaluation issue can be.

Commissioners bickered over whether Customer Service Solutions ought to be hired because no one from the company showed up at the meeting.

The company has already done work for the county. Its CEO was prepared to come to the meeting Tuesday, but Shields said he told him it wasn’t necessary.

Commissioner Trevor Fuller wanted to delay hiring the company until the board had a chance to question its leaders.

“If it takes another day, or a week, we need to get this right because we didn’t get it right the first time,” Fuller said.

County Manager Harry Jones told the board he’s used Solutions for other projects and he could have hired the company again without board approval. He said he only put it on the agenda “for transparency.”

“This looks and smells like micromanagement to me,” Jones said.

In the end, the board voted 4-3 to hire the company.