In Escambia County, when property values doubled and tripled after Hurricane Ivan, property owners were told to grin and bear it.
In Baldwin County, the state has stepped in, re-evaluated the entire process and has reduced the the property appraisals for thousands of properties. As of March 18, the Baldwin County Board of Equalization reduced 82 percent of the parcels that came before it by a total of $193 million.
Mobile Press Register reports:
Earlier this year, state officials implemented a new informal hearing process to address the nearly 16,000 appeals that hadn’t gone through the preliminary stage. That figure didn’t include a blanket appeal filed for Fairhope Single Tax Corp.’s roughly 3,000 properties, which hadn’t been addressed as of Monday, tax officials said.
Under the new process, the state forwarded condominium appeals to the Board of Equalization and the remaining 12,287 appeals were scheduled for an individual hearing before a state or county tax analyst.
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