Jackson County official says ‘chaos’ will ensue, if 2019 assessment is reversed
A countywide cap on property assessments, promoted as a possible remedy for the huge increases faced by homeowners and businesses, would be a catastrophe, Jackson County’s top legal counsel told the Board of Equalization this week.
Even if a rollback was justified—and he argued that it wasn’t—county counselor Bryan Covinsky told the board Thursday that, with Thanksgiving only a week away, it’s too late to cancel property values set in the 2019 reassessment.
“You’d be looking at chaos,” Covinsky said, if a board majority approved any of several plans proposed by Legal Aid of Western Missouri, which represents several neighborhood associations in Kansas City, or Polsinelli, the big-name law firm for owners of the Country Club Plaza and other commercial clients on property tax matters.
Tax bills are already going out, Covinsky said, and some people have already paid without complaint. There is simply not enough time, he said, to set new property values and rebill taxpayers so that they could avoid late fees by paying ahead of the Dec. 31 deadline.
A rollback to 2018 values would put school districts, cities and other taxing districts in a tough spot, as they have already set their budgets based on the assessed values, Covinsky said. An across-the-board increase meant to soften the blow for some taxpayers could invite lawsuits from others who might be justified in claiming they were paying more than their fair share.
But those advocating for broad-brush corrective action, to wipe out big tax increases that some people simply cannot afford, say the consequences are not the board of equalization’s problem to consider. Its job is to fix a flawed and deeply unfair reassessment process that has resulted in record numbers of appeals by taxpayers who feel they’re houses and businesses were valued incorrectly for tax purposes.
Some who failed to appeal fear they will lose their homes if their taxes go up 300 or 400 percent in some cases.
“We’re putting the burden on the taxpayer to fix the county’s errors,” Legal Aid attorney Brandon Mason said.
Board chairman Christopher R. Smith declined to comment on when he and the other two permanent board members would decide whether to adopt one of the rollback proposals. Or if they will reject them and continue the laborious process of determining, case by case, whether to lower assessed values on 17,000 individual properties whose owners say the county got it wrong when deciding the market value of their home, store or office building.
“I’m not discussing it,” is all he would say when asked by a reporter.
Assessment cap proposals
Another rollback proposal was submitted to the board back in October by Preston Smith, a board member who represents the Blue Springs School District and who has been a vocal critic of the 2019 reassessment process.
Smith didn’t present testimony at the special meeting and his proposal was not discussed, but he inspired others to submit plans.
Legal Aid’s proposal, delivered Nov. 1, covers properties in two areas of Kansas City where an expert’s analysis showed an “extreme lack of uniformity,” meaning that high-value properties were under-assessed and low-value properties over-assessed, Mason said. Those areas are the West Side, and communities bordered by Independence Avenue on the north and 85th Street on the south, Troost Avenue to Interstate 435.
Legal aid suggested a 6 percent cap on increases for properties at or below the median value in those areas.
Polsiinelli weighed in Nov. 4 with three additional proposals: keep values countywide where they were in 2018, raise them no more than 8 percent or no more than 14.9 percent.
The first option was his firm’s preference, Polsinelli attorney Samuel Barfoot said, without acknowledging it would be a boon to some of the firm’s clients. Barfoot declined to identify them publicly when Smith asked. One Is the Country Club Plaza, whose owners stand to shave millions of dollars from their tax bill if assessments are held at 2018 levels.
Highwood Properties sold the Plaza’s two dozen parcels to a joint venture of Taubman Centers Inc. and The Macerich Co. in 2016 for $660 million. Those properties are now on the tax rolls at $147 million, the result of the county’s botched effort during the 2017 reassessment to raise their value to a more realistic level.
The county tried to bolster its case this year by better matching the Plaza’s values to buildings surrounding Kansas City’s premier shopping area. While acknowledging that the sale price included intangibles and other assets not related to real estate values, the county believes that $421 million is a fair market value.
The Plaza appealed, arguing for an increase of no more than 15 percent, compared to the 186 percent increase the county proposed.
County officials argue that a countywide cap on assessment increases would lock in inequities that they tried to correct with the 2019 reassessment.
Covinsky said this year’s reassessment has been unfairly characterized as a disaster and cited as evidence that only 5 percent of property owners have filed appeals.
“To say that this assessment process was all wrong is a false premise,” he said.
Board of Equalization vice chair Marilyn M. Shapiro was unconvinced, however.
With appeals up three-fold this assessment period over the last one, she said, “something’s wrong.”
This story was originally published November 21, 2019 at 6:15 PM.
