DAVIS COUNTY -- Though the Utah Legislature continues to buzz with bills looking to amend last year's dramatic property tax increases, the Davis County Assessor's Office is hoping to take care of the problem a little closer to home. In a progress report presented at the county Commission's Feb. 12 meeting, Davis County Assessor Jim Ivie reported that the office will be hiring extra temp workers to help with the push to reappraise Centerville, Clearfield, and the rest of the county not included in last year's assessments.

According to both Ivie and the commission, completing the reassessments will bring the entire county up to the same level, thereby distributing the burden more evenly and dropping taxes somewhat in areas that were reassessed last year, such as North Salt Lake, Bountiful, and Farmington. Those areas, in turn, will be bumped up to current market level using sales ratio studies.

"Even though the market value of the home may have gone up, since it's shared equally throughout the county the taxes will actually drop," said commission chair Louenda Downs.

The assessor's office will also be using computer programs to help determine property value changes, and are set to hire eight temporary data collectors in order to help them acquire all the information necessary to make the calculations. They're also attempting to have the information ready for Davis County Auditor Steve Rawlings by May 1, almost a full month before the required deadline.

"It's a monumental task just to establish that baseline," said commissioner Bret Millburn.

The data collectors are being funded out of the office's surplus from 2007, since the need for the information being gathered is only a one-time issue.

"This is information we've needed all along. Once it's in there, we won't need to go back and recreate it," said Ivie. "Our staff should be able to handle it in the future."

The commission has been keeping an eye on several of the property-tax related bills currently making their way through the legislature, some of which are calling for dramatic changes to the current property assessment system.

One of these is S.B. 29, which would amend the state's Truth in Taxation Law to require that a residential vote be taken on certain circumstances of property tax increase.

The commission hopes that in-house efforts will show the legislature that the system can be corrected without such significant changes.

"We're doing our best to make sure the process is fair," said Downs. "We feel this is one of the ways we can improve."



jwardell@davisclipper.com