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Pikes Peak 5-22-13
Teller County, Colorado • Volume 52, Issue 21
May 22, 2013
75 cents
A Colorado Community Media Publication
ourtellercountynews.com
Up and down Tax valuations give pause to all By Pat Hill
phill@ourcoloradonews.com Every two years, notices of valuation cause some to yell, others to rejoice. As some homeowners complain about an increase in value by as much as $50,000, others have the opposite worry. In Woodland Park, in general, values declined by 3 percent, said Betty Clark-Wine, Teller County’s assessor. “That means that some values are going down, some going up,” she said. In this cycle, residential property is valued on data collected from July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2012. “We had only 1,466 sales of residential in four years, properties of all sizes and shapes,” Clark-Wine said. On the other hand, using the market approach, the assessor incorporated five years of data to evaluate sales of vacant land from July 1, 2007 to June 30, 2012. “We had so few sales, people weren’t building or buying, so we only had 561 sales of vacant land in five years,” she said. “They were parcels of all sizes in the entire county.” On qualified commercial properties, the assessor’s office based valuations on 35 sales in those five years. Properties used as offices are valued differently from those used as retail shops, she said. For commercial vacant land, only six qualified properties were sold in the same five-year period. “The market was such that there weren’t a lot of sales, as there had been in the past,” Clark-Wine said. “The state mandates that we have to have a minimum number of qualified sales in a class of property.”
Betty Clark-Wine, Teller County Assessor, explains the system behind property valuations and why some went up and some went down. Photo by Pat Hill
For assessment purposes, the numbers around the county varied. For instance, in the southwest quadrant, 30 percent of residential sales were foreclosures while in the southeast quadrant, which includes Cripple Creek and Victor, there were few sales and a decline in the selling prices, ClarkWine said. In the northwest part, some homeowners had an increase in property values. “In that area, some properties sold as many as three times in the same time period,” she said. “We could see prices coming up as properties were being improved.” On the other hand, subdivisions in
Woodland Park, for instance, with older and smaller homes experienced a decline in value while other subdivisions moved up the valuation scale, she said.
Variables in valuations
With variables in valuations, Clark-Wine urges homeowners to either appeal or come in and discuss options. “About a year ago, we looked at statistics and found that there were in excess of 5,000 properties that had not been personally inspected in five years or more,” she said. “These are properties that may not have sold. We usually go and look at a property when it sells.”
With a new software program, some residential properties changed from being classified as “badly worn” on the outside to “fair condition,” which would have caused the home to go up in value. “Most likely, in years past, they were undervalued,” ClarkWine said. In the cleanup process, some properties in Woodland Park went down in value by as much as 36 percent while others increased by up to 40 percent. “If they’re over-valued we can fix that on appeal; if under-valued, we had to keep them that way for two years,” she said. Valuations continues on Page 8
Things looking up, kind of, for water district By Pat Hill
phill@ourcoloradonews. com Caught in a vicious circle and a downpour of bad tidings, the Florissant Water & Sanitation District is treading water. Put on notice last week by the Department of Local Affairs, the board agreed to temporarily dissolve the district. “We don’t have any record that the district has held, or canceled, an election since 2004,” said Jarrod Biggs, research analyst with DOLA. The second nail was the board’s failure to comply with audit mandates for 2011 and 2012. “A third issue is the enforcement order,” Biggs said. In a meeting May 14 with Biggs and Clay Brown, DOLA’s regional manager, in addition to engineers from
Colorado’s public health department, the board heard possible solutions along with the bad news. The hurdles were high, however. Cited in 2010 with an enforcement order, the five-member board failed to submit the appropriate discharge-monitoring reports, or DMRs. “Some DMRs were turned in but there is still some question because they’re not meeting the necessity of enforcement orders,” said Bret Icenogle, engineer with the state’s water-quality control division. “You need to think about that in terms of how you can get your sampling done.” But it’s the audits that present the biggest threat to the district, not only the cost but also the snafu around an unelected board. “Arguably, this board can’t
Cathy Valdez, board member of the Florissant Water & Sanitation District, listens to engineers from the state’s public health department. The news is not good. Photo by Pat Hill sign anything with any legal standing,” Biggs said. To date, the audit bills have not been paid, due to
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a misunderstanding about the charge. According to the accountant, Charlotte Plush, the board was told the bill from the auditors would be $4,500 but was instead $9,400. Ideas to pay the bill included trying to get a bank loan or extending the payment period. On the issue of the legality, the board could be sanctioned in 30 days if appointed by Teller County commissioners. “Obviously, this board is trying to con-
duct the business of providing water; there is a lot of funding available and we want to try and work this district through,” Biggs said. “It’s a familiar refrain and, in rural Colorado, it’s a problem to get people to sit on the board. We have places where there are two board members, some with one.” On a positive note, Brown, the regional manager, highlighted glimmers of hope, of sun amid the
clouds. “We’re kind of flying sidewise; we’ll make it work somehow,” he said. “You guys are service providers; if you weren’t sitting here, who’s going to provide the water and sewer? Just keep it going, we’ll work the technical details out.” For a volunteer board, working with an annual budget of less than $100,000 to serve 94 customers, the state’s intercession is considered a good thing, not a judgment call, for the members as well as the accountants. “I’m glad you all are here to help us out,” Plush said. A day after the meeting, the board hired an engineering consultant, Adam Sommers, with plans to hire a full-time operator for the water system. In a district besieged by problems, brown water, regular broken water mains, and, last week, a sinkhole caused by the leakage of 80,000 gallons of water, along with a series of complaints, there were no residents at the meeting that evening. District board members are Ginger Bruvold, Cathy Valdez, Calvin Steele, Conrad Swift and Harold Clare.