Mike Hassinger’s unicorn farm and gold mines may be saved as DeKalb County announced it will be revisiting some property tax valuations.
Thursday, the county’s Board of Assessors agreed to send out revised property assessments in the next few days to a huge chunk of north-central DeKalb and a small area near Stone Mountain, acknowledging a mathematical error that calculated double- and triple-percentage increases in values there.
For most, the new assessments will be familiar. To account for a lack of time to do site visits in a reassessment, the county is returning values to their 2011 levels.
“I think I’ll live with that,” said Donald Vick, a retired accountant who saw the value on his 1,300-square-foot ranch home in Brookdale Park jump 54 percent, to $375,700. “I wanted to give them a little time to see what would break, and this is certainly the break we were hoping for.”
In all, Chief Appraiser Calvin Hicks said his office expects to send out new assessments for up to 4,000 homes, including 1,500 in Decatur that are not yet ready to be mailed. The office also is examining individual homes and smaller areas to make sure the same computer glitch didn’t hit more of the 230,000 assessments mailed May 29.
“Mistakes will be made, but I assure you that as they are, we will work to correct them,” Hicks said. “I don’t want to put the burden on any taxpayer to have too high a bill.”
As of Thursday, 1,879 homeowners in DeKalb thought their homes were overvalued and filed appeals. Those appeals will be moot for any of the homeowners getting new assessments, though they also can appeal those calculations. State law gives homeowners 45 days from mailing to file, or until July 13 for the original notices.
Who can blame DeKalb County for wanting to bring in more revenues? After all, someone has to pay the $40,000 bill for Ellis’s campaign signs touting county spending projects, and the $715,000 bill for Ellis’s unapproved, but still under construction, soapbox derby track.
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