DeKalb Times

DeKalb County Economic Development Committee met Oct. 6.

Here is the minutes provided by the committee:

The DeKalb County Economic Development Committee met virtually via Zoom. Chair Emmer called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m. Those Members virtually present were Ms. Rukisha Crawford, Mr. Tim Hughes, Ms. Kiara Jones, Ms. Terri Mann-Lamb, and Chair Laurie Emmer. Mr. Tim Bagby was absent. A quorum was established with five Members virtually present and one absent.

Others present were Gary Hanson, Pete Stefan, Derek Hiland, Bridge Nodurft, Karen Cribben, and Kathy Lampkins.

APPROVAL OF THE AGENDA

Ms. Crawford moved to approve the agenda as presented. Ms. Mann-Lamb seconded the motion. Those Members voting yea were Ms. Crawford, Mr. Hughes, Ms. Jones, Ms. Mann-Lamb, and Chair Emmer. The motion carried unanimously by roll call vote.

APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES

Mr. Hughes moved to approve the minutes from the August 4, 2020 meeting. Ms. Crawford seconded the motion. Those Members voting yea were Ms. Crawford, Mr. Hughes, Ms. Jones, Ms. Mann-Lamb, and Chair Emmer. The motion carried unanimously by roll call vote.

PUBLIC COMMENTS

There were no public comments.

REVIEW OF ASSESSMENT CYCLE PROCESS

Ms. Bridget Nodurft, CIAO-I, Chief Deputy Supervisor of Assessments for the DeKalb County Assessment Office joined the Committee to provide an overview of the many moving parts, deadline and steps to complete the Assessment Process.

Ms. Nodurft shared the Assessment year typically begins in February or March when the prior year Board of Review has completed its work and they have rolled to the new Assessment year.

The Office prints and delivers Assessment books to the Township Assessors with a listing of all of the parcels in their townships. The books contain the current assessments and any changes that were made by the Board of Review and the new farmland values which are applied by the Supervisor of Assessments office. There are currently 10 Assessors serving 19 townships.

The Township Assessors then have until July 1st to review their parcels and enter changes in their books and then return them to us. Most of the books were turned in on or before July 1st with only 3 of the books turned in, in late July due to their offices being impacted by Coronavirus closures. The Township Assessors base their changes and revisions on tax payer requests, building permits and also conduct sales studies of neighborhoods to determine if their assessments need to be adjusted in some areas of their Townships.

Once the County Assessments Office receives the books, they enter the revisions made by the Township Assessors and prepare the Assessments for publishing to the public. In 2020, they had 1 Township submit their changes electronically. For 2021, they will have at least 4 Townships submitting electronically, including DeKalb, which is the largest township in the County. With the end goal that we will eventually have all Townships submitting electronically.

At this step in the process, they have received the sales ratio study from the State. The study is performed using sales prices from the prior year and divided by the current year assessment. This gives them a ratio that indicates how close the assessors are to assessing property at the statutory level of assessments of 33 1/3 of market value.

The ratio is then used to calculate an equalization factor that is applied to all of the parcels in the Township. Bringing up or lowering the assessments to the 33 1/3rd statutory level. The 2020 factor is calculated from the 3-year average of sales ratios from 2017, 2018 & 2019. In 2020, the factors ranged from 1.71 to 6.25%, all assessments were raised to meet the 33 1/3 level.

These factors are then applied to all of the assessments except for farmland and exempt parcels, creating the new assessment base for the year. These factors and any assessment changes are published in the newspaper, on the County Website and notices sent to individual property owners that had assessment changes. This year the Assessments Office mailed out 2,986 notices.

Once the assessments have been published, tax payers have a 30-day timeframe to file an appeal with the County Board of Review. They are currently at this step in the Assessment Process, Ms. Nodurft shared.

The assessments were published on Oct.1st and the tax payers have until Nov 2nd to file an appeal. This year they moved the publication date up by almost 2 weeks so that we could move the appeal process out of the holiday season.

The Board of Review then holds hearings on the appeals. This year for the first time, residential property owners will be able to fill out and submit their appeals online and the Board of Review will be viewing the appeals on laptops. They are hoping that this will ease the process for tax payers and will also save staff time while reducing the amount of paper files we are archiving by almost 75%. The Board of Review will start holding hearings in mid-November and depending on the number of appeals filed, conclude the session by mid-February. The goal is to close the assessment year in January, but this will hinge on the placement of new Members to the Board of Review.

The Board of Review values are entered into the assessment rolls and final decision notices are published on the website and sent to the property owners.

The Assessments are finalized and sent to the State for certification. If necessary, the State will apply an equalization factor. Although in Ms. Nodurft’s 25+ years with the County, they have not needed to apply a factor.

The values are then certified to the County Clerk, the assessment year is closed and they roll to the new assessment year and start all over again.

FY 2021 BUDGET

FY 2021 Budget Appeals, if any

There were no appeals filed from any Departments that report to the Economic Development Committee.

Committee’s Questions & Review of Departments’ FY 2021 Budget Requests

There were no further questions from any Committee Members.

ADJOURNMENT

Ms. Crawford moved to adjourn the meeting at 7:14 p.m. Ms. Mann-Lamb seconded the motion. Those Members voting yea were Ms. Crawford, Mr. Hughes, Ms. Jones, Ms. Mann- Lamb, and Chair Emmer. The motion carried unanimously by roll call vote.

https://dekalbcounty.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/min20-ecooct.pdf