Assessors Review Employee Duties; Prepare for DOR Ratio Appeal

One of the first orders of business for the Jasper County Tax Assessors Tuesday was to appoint Eileen Waters, the new tax maintenance office employee responsible for personal property, as board secretary and financial officer.

Mrs. Waters has been with the department for two weeks. In addition to her newly acquired duties she will be responsible for items pertaining to personal property including mailing returns, review and data entry of information, business audits and maintaining the personal property digest.

With regard to office staff, assessors took time to review the revamped responsibilities for each of the five tax maintenance employees with chief appraiser Lynn Bentley.

Denise Reynolds, who received a five percent merit pay increase as a result of an executive session discussion Tuesday, handles property transfers including printing and review of deeds and plats. She also assists with mapping duties, conservation, and maintenance of sales files.
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Phyllis Norwood deals with conservation use applications including data entry and file maintenance. Additionally she handles homestead applications, timber sales, mobile home files, and purchasing of office supplies.

Ronnie Armistead conducts field reviews for conservation, sales, and appeals. He also evaluates new construction.

Assessor chairman Jim Harrell requested that employee reviews be performed every six months on each staff member by the chief appraiser.
Mrs. Bentley reported that work on the sales tax ratio appeal had been completed and forwarded to the Dept. of Revenue for review. The hearing had not been scheduled as of Tuesday.

The chief appraiser said that an evaluation of the agriculture sales had been conducted and she had requested the deletion of some parcels that should bring the original 37.3 configuration within the state’s required range of 38.

The final review of approximately 175 conservation applications for 2006 occupied nearly one and one half hours of time. While a preponderance of the applications were met with approval or denial some fell into the grey area of wildlife habitat, a topic which met with a brief impasse between the chairman and vice-chairman. For those applications, assessors reiterated their request for Dept. of Natural Resources certification.

Error and release forms were discussed including one mobile home value and several heavy equipment documents not reflected in the personal property digest. Also, one homestead exemption approval was granted.

Final approval of personal property digest is pending a legal review by the county attorney, who is currently John Nix until a reappointment is made by the county commission. See related story. The assessors will not approve it until an attorney has reviewed the document.

Mrs. Bentley provided assessors with a proposal from QPublic, LLC for the creation of a website. The proposal includes the creation of website for free with a one month trial. Following the trial period the annual cost would be $4,500.

With no money in the current year’s budget for a website, assessors would have to request a line item transfer from the commission to fund such. The chief appraiser was instructed to discuss mapping services with Keck & Wood so that the county maps could be accessed via the website.

Assessors reviewed and approved a proposed list of classes for staff through March 2007.