I would like to share my experience with the Bannock County Assessors office and the Board of Equalization regarding my property assessment this year. After I received my huge 43% increase in assessment this year, I contacted the Assessors office. They told me an appraiser would get back with me. Never happened. I asked for comparable properties used to calculate my value. They refused to provide comps. They also refused to provide my neighbors assessed values to see if I was in line with them. They told me I needed to do a “public records request” to get that info. Ridiculous! Anyway, I did that and deputy Assessor and current Assessor candidate Anita Hymas finally emailed the info to me. I discovered that my value was raised much more than the neighbors. That’s why they didn’t want to provide those values to me. So, Since the assessors office wouldn’t return my calls or provide comparable sales, I filed an appeal with the Board of Equalization ( county commissioners) They required me to turn in my appeal information 3 days prior to the hearing, which I did. In the hearing, I was only allowed 3 minutes to present my case. Absolutely not enough time. I was not able to get through my comparables or present other information. The deputy assessor Anita and her appraiser mentioned their comps that they apparently gave to the commissioners before hand too, but were not presented to me. The BOE (consisting of commissioners Hough, Tovey and Moser) upheld the assessor’s high 43% value increase. They had already made up their minds beforehand. It didn’t matter what I had to say. And Commissioner Moser supported this too, while his own personal home in Inkom was only raised .47% for 2021! Yes his home was raised less than ½% while most of us saw high double digit value increases! Mine was raised 43% last year too. Nice huh? After the hearing I contacted Commissioner Hough to get the comp info that the Assessor was talking about which was not presented to me in the hearing. He told me I had to do another public records request to get that info. Our elected officials are so cooperative aren’t they? After I got that info I discovered their comps were on the East Bench and University area and were superior properties. My home is on the West Bench. I have filed to appeal this again with the State Board of Tax Appeals. I shouldn’t have to go through all this if our elected officials would be cooperative and take some time to listen to taxpayers, but they don’t. I will not be voting for any incumbent in Bannock County on Election Day, and not Anita for Assessor either. Please join me in firing the people who don’t know who they are supposed to be working for.
