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Assessor Candidates Discuss Tax Assessments

Spokane County homeowners are receiving their latest tax assessments that tell tell how much their homes are worth, and many are seeing surprising increases.

The average home assessments are up by 15% over last year in Spokane County. Some homeowners are seeing much higher increases. For the entire county, the value has climbed $4 billion over last year.

But if you see a 15% increase in your tax assessment, that doesn’t mean your tax bill will go up by the same amount. That’s because the calculation is a complex formula that includes several taxing districts, like library or cemetery districts, whose rates are capped at just one percent a year. School levies can increase at much higher rates. But the overall tax increase will never be the same as the percentage increase of the assessment.

Even so, the increasing costs are of concern to the candidates for Spokane County assessor: Republicans Leonard Christian and Tom Konis.

Christian is a realtor and former state lawmaker. He says potential homebuyers have started asking how much the annual taxes are on some properties, something he had not noticed before. He says he believes his experience as a legislator would help him  remedy some of the tax increases, should Spokane’s evaluations continue to climb.

“The laws can certainly be changed. I was a legislator in 2014, and that’s what it’s all about. If it’s not fair or not working, I do have some ideas to work with legislators to improve the system, but I’m going to wait until I get in office to make those changes,”  he said.

Christian did not want to elaborate on what those changes might be.

Christian’s opponent, Tom Konis, works in the assessor’s office as the commercial industrial appraiser. He says it may be too much to expect the legislature to be able to change the taxing structure.

“The problem with getting the legislature to change the law is part of the law is in the state constitution that says all properties will rise and fall at a similar level and will be treated the same. So to change the constitution is more than just getting the legislature to pass a referendum,” he said.

Christian says the sampling rate that the assessments are based on is rather small, compared to the number of properties that need to be assessed.

“The concern is roughly 10,000 house sales in a year is setting the bar for 230,000 parcels out there. So it’s not a very large sampling," he said. "I think the assessor should really look hard at what is going on overall in the market, and adjust accordingly. You can’t just adjust prices, but you can look at that price, and if it’s just a temporary spike, not run the prices up so quickly to match that spike,” he said.

Tom Konis says California voters have tried to slow the sting of property tax increases through Proposition 13.

"Unless you sell your home, the value doesn’t increase, on new construction, things like that," he said. "It has created turmoil down there. You can have one neighbor paying a quarter of what the next door neighbor is, and when they go to sell, the value of their houses is both the same. So it creates an inequity.”

Christian, who sits on the Board of Equalization that oversees appeals of tax assessments, advises homeowners to come prepared if they plan to challenge an assessment. He says a good strategy is to bring information on comparable sales of homes in their neighborhood that the board can use to determine if a home was assessed improperly. He says the numbers of homeowners who successfully challenge the assessments is very small.

Steve was part of the Spokane Public Radio family for many years before he came on air in 1999. His wife, Laurie, produced Radio Ethiopia in the late 1980s through the '90s, and Steve used to “lurk in the shadowy world” of Weekend SPR. Steve has done various on air shifts at the station, including nearly 15 years as the local Morning Edition host. Currently, he is the voice of local weather and news during All Things Considerd, writing, editing, producing and/or delivering newscasts and features for both KPBX and KSFC. Aside from SPR, Steve ,who lives in the country, enjoys gardening, chickens, playing and listening to music, astronomy, photography, sports cars and camping.