Apr. 25—MITCHELL — Sometimes you need a little help to make good decisions.
During its regular meeting on Thursday, April 24, the Davison County Commission hosted a discussion involving Davison County Planning and Zoning Director Jeff Bathke and Director of Equalization Leah Vissia in regards to master planning and parcel assessments.
The topic has stirred controversy in Davison County, where some residents have been surprised by receiving notices of property assessments increasing by as much as 39%, and in some cases, over 500%. Property owners came before the Davison County Board of Equalization over several days last week to appeal assessments.
“We are assessing and taxing people at what the assumed value is in the future, and that’s not right. It should be assessed at what its actual value is today,” Bathke said.
Bathke cited state statute regarding a parcel sub-platted by Tim Olinger, whose acreage should already qualify for a lower assessment without the need to join the plats back together, according to Bathke.
“I would like the state attorney’s advice on this,” Vissia said.
Bathke was more than willing to reach out to the state attorney’s office on the matter.
“Our job at the county should be to help the residents resolve their problems, not give them more problems,” Bathke told the Mitchell Republic. “And this is a huge financial hardship for people, and it is anti-economic development.”
Bathke recently sold a piece of property for $280,000 which was assessed at $300,000. The land should have sold for $150,000, not at a minimum assessment of $3 per square feet, according to Bathke.
“They say that the sales are dictating the assessed value, and I disagree. It’s the opposite. My sale price was dictated by their assessed value,” Bathke said.
County Commissioner John Claggett had a problem with properties not being worth what they were assessed at, a struggle of each county in South Dakota.
“Let’s see what we can do to continue the conversation and make it work for all involved,” County Commissioners Randy Reider said.
In the meantime, Olinger is left with a $1,600 surveyor bill.
“I don’t think it’s fair for us to have to pay for it if we didn’t have to do it,” Olinger said. “We were just doing what we were told.”
On April 14, the city of Mitchell Planning and Zoning Commission approved Olinger’s plats for merging. Olinger decided to merge plats based on a conversation with the county assessor’s office.
“At the end of the day, it’s still an alfalfa field,” Bathke said.
Easements going through vacated parcels are a title, utility, and easement nightmare, according to SPN surveyor Jeremy Wolbrink.
“I can see getting a lot of phone calls in the near future on the subject,” Wolbrink said. “I don’t want to have to be doing a bunch of unnecessary work and costing clients a lot of money that they don’t have to be paying for.”
Wolbrink estimated that surveying to join parcels into a single lot to keep their tax rate at a previous year’s rate will cost property owners $1,000. People are trying to merge parcels for property that is likely to remain pasture for the next 20 years, according to Wolbrink.
Engineering and surveyor costs are cheaper for developers who plat out a whole subdivision rather than one individual lot at a time, Wolbrink says.
Reider expressed the need to be fair to Davidson County taxpayers while being development friendly.
“You’re going to go where it’s easiest to go, because you don’t want to spend your time jumping through an incredible number of hoops, you’re just trying to run your business. And we want people building,” Reider said.
Vissia suggested that the county can help developers by offering a discretionary formula, which is a tax break over a certain amount of time as set by a resolution.
Infrastructure on property, such as roads, water and sewer service, curb and gutter, and street lights should play a role in assessing property value, according to Reider.
“There’s so many stages that any one of those helps change the value,” Reider said.
Bathke, who also serves District 20 as a state representative, noted that the state legislature took measures to kill economic development in South Dakota.
“If we’re going to continue to do that at the local level, our state’s going to suffer,” Bathke said.
A county’s revenue is dependent on the assessed value of taxes, and limiting the tax revenue will cause a domino effect, according to Bathke.
“The governor’s property tax relief bill now caps assessed value at 3% per year on owner-occupied homes — that doesn’t include new development. Well, you know what’s going to come next year is all property,” Bathke said.
The Davison County Commission welcomed a new member and a familiar face to the county government board in order to fill a temporary vacancy of County Commissioner Dennis Kiner, who could not be present to canvas the results of the Ambulance Tax District election, which was held in Davison County on April 22. Brenda Bode, a past commissioner, momentarily joined the commission in order for the county to meet the requirements necessary to approve the election results,
which voters approved by 94%.