Community Outrage over Effingham County Property Tax Assessment

If you are an Effingham County homeowner who is outraged at your recent Property Tax assessment, you are certainly not alone. You may have seen the television news report on WTOC 11 when the County held a meeting Thursday May 10th on the topic. There was a packed house at the Springfield Administrative Complex. In attendance were hundreds of angry Effingham County residents ready to hear what Chief Appraiser Janis Bevill had to say about why their tax assessments are perceived as so far out of line with fair market value.

Since then, there has been a lot of misinformation out there as to when and if there was another meeting to be held. There was a second meeting held on Thursday May 17th, but it was not held by the County. Instead, it was a concerned group of residents from Meldrim.

This grass roots group of concerned tax paying citizens is called S.E.T.A. for short, and led up by President Richard Sapp. He states that the problem is not with the tax assessor’s office, but with the State’s formulas. He also mentioned, “the assessments are hard to fight – we have got to get control of the values and the

spending in this county.” This excited the crowd at the first meeting.

After reviewing the PowerPoint presentation that Ms. Bevill tried to deliver at the first meeting, but couldn’t due to the angry residents feedback, not much real understandable information was gleaned from the formula. In slides perhaps best discernable by mathematicians or statisticians, it attempts to explain the way values were assessed. It’s all about “medians,” “aggregate ratios,” “coefficient of dispersions” and “cost schedules.”

A point of interest included the average value per square foot for a house as being between $55 to $60 dollars. There were some recently sold homes used as examples of how the county assessed the value of homes. The selling price was an integral part of the formula used to set the County appraised value. In the majority of assessments, an individual County Tax Appraiser did not come out to your house, look at it, compare it with others in the neighborhood, and then decide it was worth X amount of dollars more based on last year’s assessment.

Brett Gordon, who owns a couple of acres zoned agricultural and a home, says his assessment went up $86,000. He wonders how exactly the formula was derived to assess his home and property’s value at approximately $78,000 more than he could sell it for today, based on an appraisal he got 3 months ago.

He added that he was told, when he sent in his appeal, that there would be an assessment review. Then either he would get a rejection notice, which simply means he’d still have to pay the higher amount, or he would schedule a meeting to appeal in person. If it is reassessed and found to be lower, he would be notified. Brett said, “Higher taxes are driving people out of Effingham County and will have a negative impact on Effingham as a whole.”

That is the general sentiment by all who feel they have been slammed with an unrealistic assessment. The consensus among Effingham County homeowners is, “Assessments shouldn’t be more than appraisals”. An outraged citizen at the first meeting said, “If you think my property is worth that much, I’ll sell it to you right now!”

In an effort to address the issue, Representative Buddy Carter spoke to around 200 folks that made it to the May 17th meeting. He stated that he believes the State system in effect to be “broken.” He announced that a committee is being formed to study the tax property assessment matter and formulas, “whether they are out of line, whether they are being utilized correctly.”

Pastor Mike Minter, of the Church of God Prophecy in Bloomingdale, said his assessment went up by $30,000 also. He says 6 in his congregation had assessments that totaled almost a quarter of million together. He said, “It’s a shame when the State and County value the property over the rights of the people who own it.” He also raised some questions that we all should be asking like, how many appeals have there been filed and how many of those have been adjusted? And where is all this revenue going?

In the Effingham County Annex office on Highway 119, there is a little piece of paper hanging on by one tack to a corkboard, under a cabinet, in a corner, that simply reads,”