ROAD PROJECT

FROM PAGE 5 e project will also include a signi cant smoothing of the Motsenbocker Curve and drainage improvement. e ordinance will a ect ve property owners, four located in unincorporated Douglas County, and another parcel that was annexed more than 30,000, as the deadline has passed but lings still trickle in by mail. at number dwarfs the nexthighest year for appeals — roughly 13,500 in 2009, according to Damisch.

Hudson says construction should begin in 2024, estimating the project will take about a year.

His o ce sent roughly 150,000 notices of new property values for 2023. If the number of appeals totals about 30,000, that’s a 20% appeal rate, the highest percentage of appeals in recent history for the county, Damisch said.

High appeals return

It’s the job of county assessors’ o ces to establish accurate values of homes and other properties to determine how much property owners will owe government entities in taxes — a process meant to ensure that the amount of taxes people pay is fair and equitable.

( e assessor doesn’t set the tax rate but determines the value of the property that the tax rate then gets applied to. Local government entities like counties and school districts set the tax rates. Property tax rates are o cially called “mill levies.”) e property valuation homeown- into town limits in 2012.

During public comment, resident Mike Smith claimed the department did not act in good-faith negotiations and he demanded by to give his property back.

“We do not steal land, we do not take land, we do not force people to give us land without prior cost pay to them,” said Councilmember Joshua Rivero.

Engineering and Public Works Director Tom Williams said whenever the department builds a capital project, they look to see if any agreements exist between the town and ers were receiving around early May is based on data as of June 2022, near the recent peak in the realestate market. at’s “in large part due to the fact the market was slowly appreciating,” meaning home prices were rising, Damisch said.

So even though home prices have declined since then, property values from the assessor’s o ce re ect last year’s exceptional highs.

It was a di erent story for about the last decade: From around 2013 to 2021, in Damisch’s opinion, appeals were below average.

So when homeowners would receive their notices of property value from the assessor’s o ce — based on the real-estate market from the prior year — the values were low compared to the market value at the time of receiving the notice, Damisch said.

But 2023 is the rst year since 2009 where many homeowners received a property value from the assessor’s o ce that is often higher than what their home is worth on the market at the time of the new notice, according to Damisch. In 2009, appeals reached a high mark due to the ef- property owners that may be adjacent to the roadway, whether the agreements have dedication obligations.

“We have one property, we do have an agreement in place that’s obligated to dedicate right-of-way easements,” said Williams. “ e other properties are undeveloped and are not within our corporate boundaries, therefore we have to negotiate the right-of-way and the easements with those property owners and pay them fair market value for whatever we need to acquire to build those improvements.” fects of the recession, he said.

(As of June 11, Damisch was not sure what percentage of the appeals that his o ce received this year were for residential property.)

Higher levels of review e appeal season started May 1, and June 8 was the deadline to le an appeal with the assessor’s o ce. e Douglas assessor’s o ce will issue its decisions on Aug. 15, Damisch said. at’s because “we will require every hour that’s available to us to get that done,” said Damisch, adding “we’re working nights and weekends” to get through all the appeals. ose whose appeals are denied but want to go further can raise the appeal to the county Board of Equalization from Sept. 1 to Sept. 15. e board hearings are held in September and October, and the board will send out decisions on Nov. 1 in the mail. e council also approved two more ordinances. One vacating a 0.819 acre parcel of right-of-way adjacent to Kings Point Way to LCP MFII WREN LLC. e second vacating excess right-of-way left over from the Kings Point Way project and convey the 0.232 acre parcel to the adjacent property owner KPS Retail LLC.

And if a person is still dissatis ed, they can le their appeal within 30 days of the mail date of that decision to the state Board of Assessment Appeals. Hearings at that level will be held throughout next year, according to Damisch.

“I think the decision to vacate it and convey it back to the original owners just reflects a fair and efficient use of our resources,” said Councilmember Anne Barrington.