Board of Aldermen 10-23-2018 Page 8
We had a house on Berkeley Street that was kind of an interesting situation that had a fire and the
assessment was very, very low. | knew that wouldn’t be the only property | found; | managed to find
several others that fit in that profile that speak to practices that | just feel have no place in an Assessing
Office. So that deeply disturbs me and it is pretty disappointing.
| have to tell you that there were days | came into City Hall and went down to permits and | was sick to
my stomach, | was nauseous. And I’ve had nights where | got out of bed at 2:00 in the morning, put on
coffee, looked at my data and said, “Is this even possible, am | even seeing it right”. It was so mind-
blowing to me. And the whole permit thing, | understand that permits have different values, | really do. |
don’t want you to trivialize that | don’t understand that if $100,000.00 permit is pulled your assessment
doesn’t go up 100K. But let me tell you that when | see $100,000.00 permit and | see no change in the
assessment, that’s a red flag to me. I’ve been down in permits and | have pulled a lot of the records. |
have photographed them all in my phone and | am telling you, | am seeing valuations that are so
ridiculously big on permits, that don’t show up in the assessment.
| see one permit was for $100,000.00 in 2013, 2011/2012/13 assessed that shows no valuation and my
neighbor next door gets hit for a bathroom, kitchen and basement reno and his assessment goes up
$200,000.00. | have never seen anything like that anywhere, ok? And the same $100,000.00 permit
for bathrooms, kitchen, you know, cabinetry, extensive remodel generates nothing. | don’t know what
to say to that. | don’t know how to make heads or tails out of that.
It has just been really disappointing and | feel like we are not doing what we should be doing for the
citizens in this City. | don’t think we treat the young people who come in here well. | took two simple
files for garages and pools. Let’s look at 4 garages, let’s look at 4 swimming pools, it is crazy. A
double garage with an upstairs, huge build on attached to a house that had no garage, changed the
assessment $7K. That’s so ridiculously low it is mind-boggling. The young couple with a baby that
moves in from Georgia tears down an existing garage, puts up a new one and pays $10K, but the
garage was already there and it was detached, it is not an attached. So the assessment for the garage
was in there, they had to pay for a grade change because it was new. That raised their assessment
$10K.
Then | go over to a wealthy neighborhood with 1,000 square foot garage put on that | can only see
assessed for $3,000 bucks. | mean pools, in general pools run about $20 to $24K. Then you go to a
wealthy neighborhood and a $95,000.00 pool isn’t taxed. | don’t know what to say to that except it is
disturbing. | don’t know what you can do about this though | don’t know if a Board of Aldermen can
participate in policy development. But for me, from what I’ve seen, for what is in my head, | would shut
down all Assessing in that office, no assessing until we have policies. Keep them running, but there
will be no assessing done until we have policies in place. Because | don’t see how you work, | just
can’t for the life of me understand how you are establishing equity here in the City. And | wish | could.
| am meeting with John Griffin on Thursday and | will have a chance to talk to him. | am really
disappointed with the Mayor, | feel you have been extremely harsh with me about my data and not
being truthful. | think what disappoints me most about the City is there has been such an effort to
discredit the individual rather than address the issue and it is not a political issue. This has been going
on for 10 years. | am looking at 10 years of data, this has been going on along time. So it transcends
any one Mayor, any group of Aldermen; it’s just the way it has been. | think we should address it as an
issue and not a political issue.
It has been a little tiring to be discredited as an individual rather than be treated with somebody that you
want to address the issue. Thank you.
