This week, nearly half of the property owners in Kent County will receive updated property assessments as a five-year effort on the part of the county comes to an end.
Approximately 38,000 property owners will have property taxes either raised or lowered after a new computer program equalized property assessments countywide.
Assessment Supervisor Lou Cox said many of the changes are miniscule because of different rounding procedures from the old system and new. Roughly 47% of those receiving updated assessments will see a difference of $20 or less on their property taxes.
The conversion resulted in a net loss of $3.9 million for the county, stated the letter that went out to property owners.
“Therefore, the sole purpose of revising these assessments has been to restore uniformity, equity and integrity to Kent County’s property assessment roll, and to achieve thereby a fair distribution of the county’s property tax burden among all taxpayers,” the letter states.
Kent County assessments are taken from 1987 real estate values, which is the last time the county had property assessment recalculated, Cox said. Sixty percent of those values are used as a property’s taxable assessment, where the tax rate is applied. Tax rates vary throughout the county depending on the school district.
“It’s an awfully long time to go without an assessment,” he said. “Now [the real estate market] looks completely different, of course.”
New Castle and Sussex counties have not undergone re-assessments for even longer, since 1983 and 1974, respectively, Cox pointed out.
Since the 1987 re-assessment, Kent County’s assessment office had to switch computer programs in 1999 — partly due to Y2K — that lead to a number of problems. After struggling with it for three or four years, Cox said they realized it wouldn’t work in the long term. The county bought a new program and implemented it this year after nearly five years of research and reconstruction, which makes property assessments as fair as they can be without a re-assessment.
“We now have a coherent system that’s really going to work,” he said, adding that, “What we’re doing is the very next best thing” to a re-assessment.
Levy County President P. Brooks Banta said this update has nothing to do with the county commissioners. They could only authorize a general re-assessment that would cost between $3 and $5 million and is expensive enough there are no immediate plans to undertake it.
He also said he’s only received one comment from a community member so far.
Some changes in the assessment values came from finding errors or omissions, where some errors had been on the books since 1987, Cox said.
One example where errors can be missed is if a property owner puts in a swimming pool without having the assessment updated. He said years later new owners could find themselves having their assessment increased when the error is found.
“Even though [they] didn’t do anything wrong,” Cox said. “That can be a hard thing for people to understand.”
The county is ready to answer any concerns property owners have, he said, and has set up a special phone number at 744-2437 where owners leave their name, address, phone number and any special questions.
Property owners also are encouraged to compare their assessment to similar properties nearby by using the property database at www.co.kent.de.us and clicking on the P.R.I.D.E button on the right.
Any appeals must be made in writing and received in the assessment office by the end of July on a form provided by the county.
Kent County —
