PORT TOWNSEND – A group of about 10 people upset about their recent property reassessments circled around Sequim resident Shelley Taylor during intermission at Monday’s Jefferson County commissioners meeting.
Taylor, speaking quickly and loudly, urged those dissatisfied with having their properties revalued once every four years at 100 percent fair market value, to join her effort to change the system.
Taylor is a leader of a group called Property Owners for Predictable Tax, which seeks a change in state law to place a 1 percent annual cap on the increase in a home’s assessed value.
Instead of county assessors across the state valuing properties at market value – called an ad valorem system – Taylor believes an acquisition-based system is fairer to long-term property owners and provides more predictable property tax bills.
In an acquisition-based tax system, properties are revalued at market value only when they are sold, she said.
Taylor showed up at Monday’s commissioners meeting because she caught wind there would be a turnout of people living in the Chimacum School District who received reassessment statements from the Jefferson County Assessor’s Office this month with news of double, triple – and in some cases 10-fold – valuation increases over four years earlier.
A letter to the editor in last week’s Port Townsend Leader weekly and a front-page article Sunday in the Peninsula Daily News said property owners would air their concerns to county commissioners.
That’s exactly what happened.
