Patricia Kenney: Boulder County property assessments

In response to Regina Cowles’ article of 2/15/11, I, for one, do not place the blame for the inaccurate assessment of the property she and her husband, councilman Macon Cowles, recently sold on them as homeowners. Rather, the Boulder County Assessor’s office administers a system which is inherently inequitable. My home is assessed considerably higher than the vast majority of comparable properties in my neighborhood. I availed myself of the 3 levels of appeal, ending with the Colorado Board of Assessment Appeals, with no reduction in my assessment despite compelling evidence that many comparable properties were assessed at far lower values. The Assessor’s office, the County Board of Equalization, and the state Board of Assessment applied the precedent established in Arapahoe County BOE v. Podoll barring the application of the equalization approach using evidence of the valuation of other properties as a basis for appeal. In other words, the County Board of Equalization cannot apply the “equalization” approach. Go figure. The result is, I pay significantly higher property taxes than those who own homes of equal, or in some cases even higher, value. There are many problems with the current system of valuation, not the least of which is that it is almost entirely subjective.  As stated in the Summary Appraisal report submitted by Boulder County at my state hearing, “reconciliation [which results in the final assessed value on which taxes are based] is not a mathematical process, but rather an application of seasoned professional judgment.”  I cannot begin to relate the assumptions and speculations that were made about my property in order to justify the assessment. My question is: why ISN’T it an objective mathematical process based on lot size, location, and square footage? Then, we would not see situations where one property owner (e.g, Mr. Cowles) succeeds in convincing a “seasoned professional” to reduce his assessment from $925,100 to $835,000, when its actual value was closer to 1.5 million, and someone like myself receives no relief based on spurious assumptions and legal technicalities.

Patricia Kenney
Boulder