Efforts by Cole County officials in Illinois to update property values for commercial and industrial property have led to surprises for and criticism from some property owners.
Claiming their properties values increased by as much as 800 percent in one case, a group of Mattoon Township business owners addressed the Coles County Board about the reassessment’s method and timing.
County Board Chairman Stan Metzger said the county’s $115,000 contract with local appraiser Bob Becker for the reassessment was $480,000 less than the other bid for work the county received. However, some of the township residents questioned the method the appraiser is using. Business owner Kevin Hamilton said the assessed value of property he owns went from $4,000 to $38,000, an increase of more than 800 percent.
The concern was the amount of increase in the property values that resulted from the first reassessment of the county’s business property in 16 years.
“Why do it all of a sudden?” business owner Bill Boyle asked, according to the Journal Gazette/Times Courier. “Why now?”
State law calls for property to be reassessed for taxing purposes once every four years, but the county’s business property hadn’t been reviewed since a reassessment of all county property in 2001. Supervisor of Assessments Karen Biddle, a longtime employee of the assessment office, said the reassessment did start about 15 years ago when one of her predecessors was in the supervisor’s position. But she doesn’t know why the work didn’t continue.