Marion County’s property tax inequities drew a big crowd to Tuesday’s board meeting. But those in attendance were told by Board Chair Steve Whritenour an outside firm would be brought in to suggest improvements at the August budget committee meeting.
“We’ve got to attract business to Marion County, not chase it away,” Whritenour said. “If somebody can get their tax bill for a fourth of the cost in another county, then something is wrong with how we’re figuring. We’ve got to get to the bottom of that. That’s why we need to have an outside third-party evaluation of what’s going on.”
A report from the state indicates only five counties have a bigger problem with incorrect assessed values than Marion County. The property tax advisors will make suggestions to the county board on how they can improve the inequities.
Three business owners complained earlier in the meeting that commercial property taxes are so out of line they are curtailing development in Salem.
Neal Smith of Little Egypt Golf Cars not only complained about the excessive valuation, but also the city and county not delivering on a ten-year property tax abatement promised under the Enterprise Zone. He did say the issue was corrected through a certificate of error for this year but isn’t resolved.
“I see no evidence of fairness, consistency, or formulation. All I see is confusion,” Smith said. “How do you run a business that way? How do you attract a business that way? How do you keep a business that way? Mt. Vernon would have rolled out the red carpet for us to move to Mt. Vernon and build this building, but we wanted to put it here. We wanted to show people what Salem could do. If you want to keep local people and young people here, show them something new.”
He then asked for a vote of no confidence on Supervisor of Assessment Mark Miller.
“I request that the board have a vote of confidence on the tax assessor’s performance. If he fails that vote, you should ask for his resignation. Opposite that, you get a commitment that he’s going to work with some auditors from this board to completely review everything that’s happened in that office, how all the property valuations have been done. It needs to be done. Not just for business, but individuals.”
After the meeting, Whritenour noted Miller was an elected official who ran his office as he saw fit.
Roy Landers, who owns multiple businesses, says he is cutting back on his plans at Iron Saddle due to the excessive taxes.
“At Iron Saddle, we were planning on covering an arena out there and actually having thousands of people come here every weekend for events, but I did the math on that,” Landers said. “With $150,000 in property taxes, there’s no way. So we backed up and actually started buying in other counties and other areas. We’re moving out because of it, because we can’t do it anymore here.”
Paul Jones of Big R says his development plans have also been curtailed.
“We need a store that’s twice as big as what we’ve got, offering more products, more employment, just to benefit the community,” Jones said. “As they said, we can’t even begin to entertain it because of what the taxes are here.”
In response to the complaints, Miller said he was not valuing all commercial property at new construction rates. He noted the program he is using is only part of the equation used in determining the values. Miller blamed the recent large property tax multipliers on homes selling well above their values because of a shortage of houses.
