Assessor Cheryl Romano Just Doesn't Get It!

WHAT ME WORRY?

Or, Does she deliberately miss the point?

The 14,800 plus people who received her 10% or greater tax letter that notifies of a significant tax increase do not see her assessment actions as appropriately valuing their real estate. In her letter to the editor in the March 5 Exponent-Telegram; she mistakenly thinks that there is a debate about the actions of the County Commissioners to hold assessed values to the 2005 level. That’s not the debate. The concern, argument, issue, and rebellion are about her brand new off-the-shelf, raise-em-all, tax assessment philosophy that she made for 2006.

Romano claims that this is all about fair market value. It is not. It is about many of the people receiving the 10% letter not being told what their new tax would be until after the period when they could have objected. Many of those who did protest their new assessment had their assessments reduced; some by huge percentages. So, if her appraisal reflected the fair market value why were so many reduced when people asked for a hearing and objected. The answer is that a lot of this appraisal was purely arbitrary. If you were not clever or experienced enough to demand a hearing by her cut-off date your taxes jumped.

Why did taxes not go up as significantly in 2002, 2003, 2004, or 2005? Is this because Cheryl Romano was NOT doing her job in those years and just started doing it this year? That so called ‘fair-market value’ did not happen in the last year alone. The State Senate is passing a bill that requires that Assessors bring up property assessments to market value over a six year period. Why did Romano think that she had to do it all in one year? She has ducked providing an answer to that question. Everyone expected to live with the established tax rates as are known and controlled by the county commissioners.

It was Romano’s misjudgment of how much the property owning public would put up with when she decided to stick it to them all in one year. Then blame the Commissioner for not lowering the tax rate to keep the taxes down. Her, “Charleston made me do it” excuse is not being bought by most people in the county, especially when they learn that over 50 out of 55 counties had not done a similar 100% market-value assessment and will phase in what “Charleston wants” over a multi-year period. Romano’s policies were over the top; it showed arrogance and lack of judgment on her part to send the radical reassessment to the commissioners and then expecting it to be rubber stamped!