A Texas city’s council will challenge its appraisal district’s valuation of commercial properties after it released a report showing commercial properties were undervalued by an average of 47 percent from 2012 to 2014.
The Austin City Council voted unanimously to file a petition challenging the valuations by the Travis Central Appraisal District (TCAD), the Austin Monitor reported. A day later, meeting in a rare special voting session, the Travis County Commissioners voted 3-2 to stay out of the dispute, opting neither to file its own challenge of the appraisals or to join the Austin council in its challenge.
Appraisal District attorney Debbie Cartwright said that Austin’s filing of a challenge petition would allow the city and district to exchange information from the report – even if the petition later was revoked. Because the state does not have a law that requires property buyers and sellers to disclose sale prices to the government, the appraisal district has not previously had access to that information, the Austin Monitor reported.
Supporters of the challenge say the undervaluation has put an extra burden on residential taxpayers. However, there is no guarantee that the challenge will result in lower residential tax bills. Furthermore, a delay in the certification of appraisals could throw a wrench in the budget-making processes going on in the communities that rely on TCAD.
One county commissioner asked Cartwright to address the worries about the timeline. She said that Austin Mayor Steve Adler indicated during the council vote that his objective was to share the city’s information with TCAD.
“If the chief appraiser in reviewing that information believes that the rolls were properly done or they could do a subset of a reappraisal or any other number of options, the city would be willing to withdraw its petition to challenge,” Cartwright explained.
If Austin is successful in its challenge, certification of the tax roll would be bumped to mid-November instead of July 20 as currently planned, council said in its meeting.