About 300 property owners filled one side of the Concrete High School gym Monday night to vent their frustration over higher property values in a down housing market.
They were eager to hear how they might challenge their property assessments, which will mean higher property tax payments next year for those who had the highest increases.
That would include a great number of residents in the upriver communities. They received assessments 15 to 20 percent higher than they did last year, while most of the rest of the county — including Burlington, Mount Vernon and Anacortes — saw little or no change to their property values.
Some properties around Concrete more than doubled in value over the last two years, according to the Skagit County Assessor’s Office. But those numbers don’t appear to match with the reality — declining house values and a frozen real estate market, upriver residents say.
Chief Deputy Assessor Wes Hagen went through what by now has been a routine explanation of his office’s process. Communities in Sedro-Woolley and points upriver were physically inspected over the last year to obtain their new valuations, and the higher values bring those communities more in line with the rest of the county.
The assessor’s office does physical inspections of different parts of the county in different annual cycles. Upriver communities had their turn earlier this year.
A Concrete resident who had researched the property-value appeal process took over the meeting from Hagen. The resident, a carpenter named Matthew Thornton, explained at length the differences between land valuation methods and building valuations, and told residents to arm themselves with as much specific information about their property assessment as they could to prepare for the appeal.
Some at the meeting, which had to be moved from the high school commons because the crowd was too big, appreciated more what Thornton said than what county officials had to say.
“Matthew was very educated,” Concrete resident Richard Vedvick said. “This guy,” Vedvick said, pointing to Hagen, “is conceding his plight to the bureaucracy. He’s constrained by the law. He can be constrained, but the market has gone down, not up.”
Hagen tried to assure residents that the assessments were not a “money grab” by the county. Taxes are based on the budgets passed by the county commissioners and by other taxing jurisdictions, not by property values, he said.
Those at the meeting understood that they would have a higher tax bill next year, and the economic downturn seemed to fly in the face of the assessments.
“Why should all of us have to go in and take all our time, wasting our time, when you have admitted (property values have) gone down,” said Marty Glaser, a real estate appraiser who owns 80 acres in Concrete. “Why are you forcing us to go through all this work? You’re hoping that we won’t.”
Glaser received applause when he suggested filing a class-action lawsuit against the county.
Hagen has said property values only began to decline later this year, after the assessments for next year were validated. Property values upriver have gone down about 3 percent this year, according to the Assessor’s Office.
Glaser disagrees.
“As an appraiser I know things have been going down since 2006, not the last six months,” Glaser said.
Commissioner Sharon Dillon said at the meeting that she would do whatever it took to give people an extension on the appeal deadline, which is Dec. 9.
“I’m going to say, ‘Yes,’” Dillon said to the crowd when asked if she could promise an extension.
“I might be in big trouble, but I’m going to do everything in my power,” including going to the governor, Dillon said.
Ralph Schwartz can be reached at 360-416-2138 or .
