By Kelly Young

kyoung@jacksonvilleprogress.com

The Cherokee County Appraisal District mailed out tax valuations to local property owners a few weeks ago, and while the increase is nowhere near as sharp as it was last year, values in most of the county’s jurisdictions did again go up.

According to Chief Appraiser Lee Flowers, most entities experienced a net increase in property values; however, the city of Jacksonville actually lost more than $3 million of its tax base compared to 2008.

“The biggest problem in Jacksonville was from the plant closures of Astro Air, Alliance Data, Galaxie Boat Works and Posaditos. Just in terms of the business personal property, not the real estate, we are estimating $9.7 million in tax base loss,” Flowers said. “Plus we’ve got one business that is down over a million dollars in inventory value and another that is down just under $200,000 in inventory value.”

But while the city may be suffering from a net reduction, the Jacksonville Independent School District saw its value increase by nearly $12.4 million in 2009.

Flowers said market value changed — either positively or negatively — by less than $500 for 24,873 accounts, increased by more than $500 for 16,980 accounts and decreased by more than $500 for 3,372 accounts.

CCAD did a major reevaluation of Lake Jacksonville this year, and as a result, Flowers said typical lake lots increased in value while the average lake residential property decreased in value.

“We pretty much doubled our lots out there and we then brought the residential values down to compensate for the fact that the lots went up so much. Total property-wise, some of those people on the lake are seeing a reduction while others are seeing an increase,” he said.

According to Flowers, Cherokee County’s commercial real estate market is flat and its residential market is “probably best described as flat to moderately increasing in some areas.”

Residential values increased the most in the city of Alto — where they increased 4 percent across the board — and in the Rusk school district — where some went up by as much as 10 percent.

The appraisal district was bombarded with angry property owners in 2008, and Flowers said the response this year has been comparatively muted. He thinks part of the reason for the milder reaction to the value increases could be because of a newsletter CCAD included with the notices this year.

“This is something I decided to try this year to help get some information out in front of the taxpayers so they have a better idea why we did some of the things we did. Across the industry, appraisal districts are not doing a very good job of communicating with the public, and this was an effort to do that,” Flowers said. “Timber values went up countywide because the interest rates have fallen over last year, and I knew to expect a lot of flak and grief over that, so it was one of the topics we included in the newsletter, and it seems to have kept some of the phone calls off of us.”

So far 717 county citizens have made inquiries into their valuations and 299 have lodged formal protests. Hearings with the Appraisal Review Board have already been scheduled for June 24, July 2 and July 14. Property owners have 30 days after they received their notice of value to officially protest the appraisal district’s numbers.

An application to protest was included in the envelope along with all valuations, and that can be mailed to CCAD at 107 E. Sixth St. in Rusk, but must be postmarked before the deadline. People can also just call 903-683-2296 to start the start the protest process.

All figures provided by the appraisal district at this time are estimates and have not been certified for use by the county’s entities.