Owners receive change of value

notices

By Chaz Holmes

Herald staff writer

Assessor's office values one quarter of county

GRANT COUNTY - The Grant County Assessor recently mailed change of value notices for the 2008 tax year, alerting homeowners to the current value of their homes and property tax payments.

The assessor's office evaluates home values every four years and the office has re-valued one-fourth of Grant County. The affected areas are Cascade Valley, the Larson subdivision, inside Coulee City, Royal City, Warden, Ephrata east of the canal, all of farm block 40 and farm block 80. The values are put into a formula for determining the levy rates.

The rate is determined by taking the amount of money needed by a taxing district's budget and dividing it by the value of all taxpayers' parcels, meaning homes, in the district.

"As assessor, I am charged with the task of collecting information about all sales occurring during the last five years which reflect current values in the housing market. With that information, my task is to set the value of all properties at 100 percent of the actual market value as fairly and uniformly as possible so that all property owners in the county are paying their correct share of property taxes, no more, and no less," Grant County Assessor Laure Grammer said.

She said the increase in values is attributable to area expansion, citing Quincy, which has the Yahoo! and Microsoft data centers, as an example.

"I think that a lot of it has to do with the frenzy of all the new industries that are coming into the area," she said. "Around Quincy, they're not building one or two houses, they're building whole neighborhoods. Plus we're a resort destination. People come here for our water as well as for our power."

Grammer said this strains the taxing district to provide better services as the area expands.

She called the growth a blessing and a curse because homeowners' home values increase, giving them greater value on the housing market, but increased property taxes may prove burdensome.

Grammer said if anyone receives an assessment of their home they feel is incorrect, they have 30 days to contact her office. A team of seven appraisers worked on the assessments. Disagreements of property values are sometimes settled when people discuss it with the appraiser. People may request copies of the sales information the appraiser used to assess the property.

"If they truly believe that there's been a mistake made, call me, call my office, and we will be more than happy to look at it with you because I don't want to build an adversarial relationship with the public, I work for them. If we've made a mistake, I want to correct it," Grammer said.

Certain people and organizations may be eligible for exemptions, deferrals, or both. Grammer said people can contact her office for information about property tax.

For more information, call 509-754-2011.