Des Moines County Assessor Matt Warner says more than 50 people have already requested informal hearings, after his office sent out close to 19,000 change notices to local property-tax payers.
Warner says across-the-board, residential valuations are up about two percent from last year, 57% of the County’s residential property owners had higher valuations and 37% were assigned lower values. For the remaining six percent, there was no change. Warner has himself and a staff of three others to handle the informal disputes and we wondered whether four people could handle potentially many more objections. He said he doesn’t know yet.
If you’re one whose property assessment has changed, you can go the informal route, with the Assessor’s office, until May 4th…or you can file a formal appeal between next Monday and May 5th, with the Board of Review. That independent panel will schedule a full hearing sometime in May.
