Meck Tax Reeval 2023: Shockingly High Valuations; Is Revenue Neutrality in Play?

This week I had a chance to speak with a Mecklenburg County official who is close to the process of the 2023 tax reevaluation. I am not going to mention my sources, I can do that because I am a blogger and not a reporter (obviously), but what this person had to say was interesting...

Me: So, tell me, what is the county expecting with the reevaluaiton this year?

Undisclosed source, "Well, you didn't hear it from me, but this year is going to be a doozie. Not to say that I am expecting the trainwreck of 2009, our systems have been dramatically improved sense then, but know that the median residential home valuation is up 61% and the medium commercial valuation is up 41%"

Me: "Whoa! That means just about everyone is going to be paying more in taxes!"

Undisclosed source: "Well, that depends. It depends on if the County Commissioners want to stay revenue neutral or not." (they could lower the tax rate and collect the same total amount of taxes.)

Me: "And what do you think. What are you hearing?"

Undisclosed Source: They haven't said, but the scuttlebutt is that they will increase the total revenue.

Me: "What happened in 2009? Why was that such a disaster?"

Undisclosed source with a painful expression on their face: "That was a real mess. We refunded $250,000,000 dollars and we had to perform the entire assessment twice. There were a lot of issues that caused the problem, but at the end of the day, the assessor was incompetent, we lack the computer systems to perform the task and we did not have enough people in place to handle all of the appeals. I do not see that happening again this year. We learned a lot of lessons."

Me: "Anything else that you learned?"

Undisclosed source sounding more confident: "You know, we really learned a great lesson in the need to listen to people when they complain. Also, and I should have mentioned this before, we changed the assessment period from every 8 years to every 4 years."

So there you have it - a behind-the-scenes look at what's going on with the 2023 tax reevaluation. It sounds like we'll see some changes and perhaps some fireworks.