‘We’re not going to come here and get beat up by you guys’ says tax assessor

After avoiding an appearance at an Aug. 8 Columbus Council meeting, two members of the Muscogee County Board of Tax Assessors showed up Tuesday at the request of frustrated council members.

Chester Randolph, chair of the tax assessors board, and Matthew Moorefield, the youngest and newest member, spoke only after councilors insisted that they do so.

Randolph said other tax assessors didn’t show up because of strong comments made by some city councilors regarding unprecedented tax assessment increases throughout the county. Those absent were Lawton Grantham Jr., Daniel Hill and Pat Bettis Hunter.

“They don’t want to stand here and get beat up by City Council,” Randolph said of his fellow assessors. “We’re doing the best job we can do. We’re a part-time board, not full-time. And yet, some of these council members have gone out and encouraged people to beat us up; put our phone numbers out there, put our emails out there and just bombarded us with stuff that we don’t need to be bombarded with.

“You had my deputy chief here three weeks ago for six hours asking the same questions,” he continued. “Each one of you got to ask the same questions over and over again. I’m saying, ‘That’s dumb.’ ... Why beat us up for something that we feel we’ve done right, by the law?”

Randolph said he didn’t want to answer questions in such a contentious setting and would prefer to communicate with councilors over lunch, at a Tax Assessor’s Board meeting or via email.

“We’re not going to come here and get beat up by you guys, that’s not going to happen,” he said. “... You want to point fingers, then point fingers at me. We made a mistake, we’re going to correct it. But there’s a process for that. If the citizens don’t want to follow that process, my hands are tied.”

Moorefield introduced himself as an appraiser who does the best that he can as a member of the Board of Tax Assessors.

“I’ve got 12 years experience. I do residential and commercial, and I’m standing by the system,” he said. “And we’re going to fix it and do everything to go forward. I think going back would be anti-progressive, if that’s a word. Everything Chester said I agree with;I support it. And that’s all I can say from my standpoint.”

Mayor Teresa Tomlinson thanked tax assessors for their work, and stressed the importance of having an independent board not influenced by politics. But the interaction between tax assessors and some councilors remained tense.

Prior to their comments, Councilor Judy Thomas asked the tax assessors’ attorney, Randy Lomax, about a resolution that council passed at an Aug. 8 meeting, requesting that the Board of Tax Assessors roll back tax assessments to 2016 levels.

At that meeting, Councilors Thomas and Walker Garrett asked why members of the Board of Tax Assessors were absent, despite requests from some councilors that they be present to answer questions.

“I just have to say to you, Mr. Lomax, that I’m very disappointed this morning,” Thomas said at the time. “... I do not go anywhere in this town since these tax bills hit the mailboxes that somebody doesn’t say something to me about this process. And we have not had an opportunity to talk to, or with, the Board of Tax Assessors.”

The Tax Assessor’s Board met Aug. 14 and tabled the resolution. On Tuesday, Thomas asked Lomax how long it would be tabled.

Lomax said the board met again Monday and voted to reject the resolution. He said City Attorney Clifton Fay had been notified of the decision.

Thomas said councilors were hoping to have had an opportunity to speak with tax assessors before that decision was made.

During his remarks, Randolph said many of the unprecedented tax assessments occurred because some properties were missed over the years due to insufficient resources in the Tax Assessors Office.

“With that being said, the council right here has the ability to control that,” he said. “... You set the millage rate. You set the tax rate, not us. Please understand that. So if the taxes are too high you have the ability to change it by changing the millage rate.”

Councilor Gary Allen said councilors are just as frustrated as Randolph is about the whole situation. He said tax officials presented council with plans for the software conversion in 2014 and returned with a few updates. But councilors were unaware of the significant increases until notices went out on June 30th.

“Because of the process, because of the Tyler Technologies system that’s in place, because of the lack of communication, because of the deadlines being missed, we caught the heat,” he said. “That’s why we’re asking you to be here. ...We wanted answers to questions, because when there was no communication, we didn’t know what to tell the public. We were not informed.

“... Several of us have attended homeowner group meetings and we literally had our head handed to us because people are upset,” he said. “... You can get as frustrated as you want to, but when you don’t communicate with us, there’s a problem.”

Randolph said he disagreed with some of Allen’s comments but didn’t want to debate the issue.

“I really have not seen the leadership in this city council when they go to these forums because it’s almost like my phone blows up the next day and my email blows up the next day,” he said. “So I don’t know what’s going on and what’s being said at most of these forums.”

Allen said Randolph would’ve known what happened at the forums if he had attended those to which he was invited.

Lomax said tax assessors have avoided using the word “mistake” when talking about the issue.

“That’s not healthy in all this discussion for you to avoid that,” Allen said. “If we’ve got something that we need to fix, then we need to admit that there’s been a problem.”

Lomax said the problems are with individual parcels, not the system.

Allen said: “If this had been any other corporation, everybody involved would have been terminated.”

He and other councilors raised questions about Tyler Technologies, the vendor used for the software conversion. Lomax said he would try to have a representative from the company attend the next council meeting.

Also at the meeting, Deputy Chief Appraiser John Williams updated council on the tax appeals process. He said the Tax Assessors Office had processed 8,716 appeals as of 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, which is 12.5 percent of the county’s taxable real property accounts.

Georgia law prohibits the State Revenue Commissioner from approving a digest when 8 percent or more of the number of properties is on appeal and 8 percent or more of the assessed value in dispute is on appeal.

While the percentage of properties has far exceeded the 8 percent threshold, the percentage of assessed value in dispute had only reached 2.8 percent, Williams said.

Williams said tax assessors had already reviewed 3,156 appeals, 55 percent of which were recommended for reductions. Thirty-four percent were recommended for no change, 8 percent were recommended for Division Manager Review and 3 percent were designated for administrative manager review.

Councilor Glenn Davis said the problem is not over and taxpayers deserve an apology.

“You know, I’m going to show some leadership here,” he said. “I’m going to apologize to the citizens of Columbus for where we’re at.

“Whether it’s arrogance, whether it’s pride, whether it’s a matter of not wanting to admit what really happened, nobody has apologized to the citizens of Columbus,” he said. “And my only regret, if I could do it all over again, I would have never approved that software upgrade and the revaluation.”

This story was originally published August 23, 2017 at 2:12 AM with the headline "‘We’re not going to come here and get beat up by you guys’ says tax assessor."