Reassessment Still Muddied
By Stacey Creasy
PLYMOUTH � School superintendents and local government officials converged Thursday hoping to get a few answers regarding the reassessment.
They left without any.
�There are still more questions than answers at this point,� said Marshall County Treasurer Penny Lukenbill. Indiana is under a court order to move to a fair market system. The original deadline for the reassessment that is now being done was July 1999.
Since then, state lawmakers hesitated to make the necessary changes to obey the order.
Gov. Frank O�Bannon forced the General Assembly to make the changes during a special session earlier this year. The reassessment has since been one big guessing game.
It normally takes 18 to 24 months to conduct a reassessment. This time, counties were given about eight months in which to do it.
No one is going to come close to making that deadline.
Lukenbill hosted a session in which county officials attempted to bring superintendents, local officials and residents up to date on the reassessment as well as the tax bills for 2002.
Lukenbill was flanked by Marshall County Assessor Mike Boys, Marshall County Auditor Jan Quivey, Mark C. Webb with the Department of Local Government Finance, Lois Kelso with the assessor�s office, Neysa McFarland with the auditor�s office and other county employees.
Marshall County Commissioner Kevin Overmyer was also on hand.
Lukenbill gave out a timeline he put together for �illustrative purposes� only.
�This should not be used as an exact timeline,� Lukenbill stated. �These dates could be sooner or they could be much later.�
Lukenbill later agreed the dates are the best guess by county officials at this point.
Right now, nearly two-thirds of the residential/agricultural data from the state-mandated reassessment has been entered into the system. Kelso said about 34 percent of the commercial/industrial data has been entered.
Boys has two shifts of employees entering data, 16 hours, five days each week.
County officials are �guesstimating� Form 11 will be sent to taxpayers around Feb. 28.
�You will still have your 45 days to respond,� Lukenbill said.
County officials are hoping to certify tax rates around June 9 and advertise tax rates by June 20.
County officials are hoping to mail tax bills in mid-July and give taxpayers until mid-August to pay their taxes.
�With all the confusion we just didn�t feel 15 days would be fair,� Lukenbill added. �That is why we are giving taxpayers 30 days to pay their taxes.�
Lukenbill and Boys said the equalization process is one of the big unknowns.
For example, Quivey explained, the county will not be able to certify the tax rate for Culver schools until they know the tax rates from the other three counties that pay taxes to the Culver School Corporation are as equal as possible.
When asked if all 92 counties would have to have their reassessment completed before anyone could send out tax bills, local and state officials did not have a clear-cut answer.
Hoosiers will likely pay less property taxes this year due to a series of credits implemented by the General Assembly. Other than that, local officials are not sure of anything.
In the meantime, schools, city and county governments, townships � any entity that depends on a tax draw � are lining up at the Indiana Bond Bank to borrow money to pay the bills until the revenue comes in.
No one knows when that will be.
�It is possible there may only be one tax draw this year,� Lukenbill explained.
Webb commended the county officials for working together on the issue and for keeping the lines of communication open.
�We are all going to be met with a lot of challenges ahead,� Lukenbill said.
�We need to keep the lines of communication open and work together to get through this. Do not hesitate to give us a call.�
Webb said county and local officials are �wandering through new territory here.�
He also advised county officials, local government and residents to work together until the questions are answered and the issues resolved.
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