You work, and save, and finally take the plunge and buy a house. That house may be your biggest investment ever. Typically, you would expect its value to increase. Not so for homeowners in Jefferson County.
This year's revaluation notices show 93% of the properties remained the same or dropped in value for the fourth consecutive year.
However, any property owner can file a protest report. Beware tough, there are guidelines to follow, and a rapidly approaching cutoff date in which to do so.
Bob Rogers is the chairman of the Jefferson County Board of Equalization and Adjustments.
"The board is just trying to establish the fair and reasonable mark.et value e for their properties for taxation purposes," said Rogers.
Rogers idea of fair and reasonable,may not be the same as property owners in Jefferson county.
"We want to make sure that everybody knows that they have the option protesting," he said.
That doesn't mean stand outside of Roger's office and demand your property value be changed. The process may be completed one of two ways.
One option is to go to boe.jccal.org, click on the link titled "2012 protest form", print and fill out a separate form for each parcel, then mail the form to the Jefferson County Board of Equalization for review.
If you do not have Internet access, Rogers says the board will except a written letter.
"We will accept those letters. It does not have to be in an exact form. The main thing they need to know to know is they need to have their name and parcel id number," said Rogers.
In addition, be sure to include a telephone number, the 2012 value you are objecting, and your opinion of what the value should be. Once your protest form or letter is processed, a hearing is scheduled.
"The purpose of the hearing is to give the property owner an opportunity to bring us some additional information on why they don't think their property is worth what the board has it appraised for," said Rogers.
All protest forms must be in by July 16th. Rogers says they will process every form and letter as soon as they begin coming in, which he suspects will be sometime this week. Rogers says the board will begin scheduling hearings around the second week of July.
If you do not want to attend a hearing. You can mail the information. Rogers says, in years past, it took between 12 to 14 months to get through everyone's protests.
For more information and protest forms go to http://jeffconline.jccal.org/boe/boe/BOEMainPage.html.
