Lake Norman residents push for more to be done on revaluation concerns

Lake Norman’s new representative in the state legislature says he expects state politicians to write a bill by February that would allow Mecklenburg County to offer refunds to residents who were overcharged during the 2011 countywide revaluation.

Jeff Tarte, senator-elect for the newly created District 41, said he is working with bill writers in the legislature to create a bill that would enable the county to pay the refunds.

“It’s a massive mess that should have never happened,” he said.

The 2011 revaluation caused a countywide controversy that ultimately cost former Tax Assessor Garrett Alexander his job. Thousands of taxpayers complained that their properties were vastly overvalued and that their concerns weren’t being heard. In December, Alexander was reassigned to a new position, at a lower salary.

Mecklenburg County Commissioner Karen Bentley, who represents District 1 in the Lake Norman area, said that, legally, the county can’t refund money.

In the event that the state allows them to, Bentley said the process may not be as straightforward as it seems – especially considering that some people who paid their tax bills and who qualify for a refund may have moved.

She added that residents should keep in mind that there’s a flip side to those who were charged too much and need refunds: those who were undercharged and need to be billed again.

“It becomes very complicated very quickly when you start to look at refunds,” she said. “The basic premise is absolutely they should get a refund. But people need to clearly understand the complicated nature of providing those refunds and the additional tax levy that’s possible.”

Cornelius resident Ron Kelley said that he thinks charging those who were undercharged would be a mistake.

“I think it’s a big can of worms that would just make the lack of trust even worse,” the Cornelius resident said. “This needs to be about fairness and transparency. Once you have the public trust reach this low point, you have to try harder. You don’t do what you would normally do, you have to try harder.”

Mecklenburg commissioners voted in December to hire Pearson’s Appraisal Service to expand a review to all 1,100 neighborhoods in the county 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.

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.

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.

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

“I think it’s a major first step because you can’t fix something unless you know what’s wrong,” Cornelius resident Barb Scott said. “But once they identify what’s wrong, they need to fix it properly.”

Several Lake Norman residents said recently that while they’re happy with the county’s move to expand the independent review, it’s still not enough.

“Almost all the focus was looking forward,” said Kelley, a Patricks Purchase resident who never appealed his property revaluation. “There’s been very little energy put in going back and repairing mistakes made. They’re still resisting going back and doing that.”

Tarte said he thinks the county needs to do a completely new revaluation, to replace the one conducted in 2011, saying that it’s unconstitutional to treat one group of residents differently than the rest.

Still, he emphasized that the correction would not be done overnight.

For some residents, any correction may be too late to save them from being priced out of their homes, said Lake Norman area Realtor Maureen Roberge. She cited several examples:

The tax value for one property on Ewart Road in Huntersville jumped from $168,300 in 2010 to $333,600 in 2011, she said.

Another property on Waterview Drive in Cornelius saw its tax value jump from $497,000 to $893,700 between 2010 and 2011, she said. That property sold for $625,000 in November.

“It’s really caused great havoc for folks. Their kids have grown up and they’re retired and all of a sudden they’re being priced out of their homes,” she said.

Compounding problems is that tax values are so skewed from market values that it’s hard for owners to sell their properties to buyers who may not be willing to pick up the extra tax burden.

In the short term, residents said they plan to maintain contact with the state and local representatives to make sure the issues associated with the 2011 revaluation are corrected.

“I won’t say it’s going to be easy. There are serious issues here,” Scott said. “But just because it’s hard does not mean it shouldn’t be made right.”

But ultimately, residents hope that the state will update the Machinery Act, to prevent such problems from happening on any future revaluation.

The Machinery Act, which governs property taxes and requires reappraisals at least every eight years, is supposed to guarantee that property taxes are set uniformly in each county.

“That’s a bigger, thornier issue because it affects the other 99 counties,” Kelley said.

Residents noted the document has remained largely untouched since it was last updated in 1971.

Kelley said he would like to see the document updated to address the county’s change from individual appraisals to computer-aided mass appraisals.

In a perfect world, he’d like to see the act updated to put the burden of proof on the assessor before the next revaluation.

“The next revaluation that they do, it’s going to undergo big scrutiny, because people just don’t trust,” Kelley said. “People want fairness, transparency and accountability. When you give people that, they’re not going to give you the grief that they’ve given because of this revaluation.”