Dec 31, 2017 1 min read

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The Washington County property reassessment will become a decade-long process in 2018. In some ways, the reassessment saga in 2017 came full circle, when individual cases began to be heard in court. The first reassessment in more than three decades was triggered by the McGuffey and Washington school districts demanding that Washington County Court order revaluing of property, on which county, municipal and school district tax levies are based.

Representatives of the school districts began attending county commission meetings and raising the reassessment topic in 2008. The commissioners weren’t interested. So Washington and McGuffey filed a mandamus action, and the court fight lasted until the commissioners ran out of legal avenues in 2013.

As of Dec. 22, the court had convened 1,290 conciliation conferences on property assessment appeals. Those reaching a mutual agreement totaled 859; cases postponed numbered 199; among those proceeding to a formal hearing were 153; and 79 appeals were either discontinued or withdrawn, according to Washington County Court Administrator Patrick Grimm, whose statistics do not include 80-some parcels where settlement agreements were still being circulated among the parties. As to those that reached the formal hearing stage, 17 cases were convened, 82 agreements were hammered out, 18 were postponed and four were withdrawn or discontinued.