County ratifies $45,000 commercial appraisal agreement; assessor reports large land revaluation

Carbon County commissioners on Wednesday ratified an agreement to purchase commercial appraisal services from the Utah Association of Counties for $45,000 and heard a report from the assessor’s office on recent revaluation work.

The ratification motion approved an agreement the county had already signed because the work was time-sensitive, Amy Peters, a county staff member who presented the item, told commissioners. “This is just to have agreement that we accepted a commercial bid on our appraisal services from Utah Association of Counties for $45,000,” Peters said during the meeting.

The measure matters because the county’s assessor’s office has been correcting property characteristic data and performing a targeted revaluation of land across the county. Chief Deputy Assessor Kevin Yule told the commission the office reviewed and revalued land on about 15,000 parcels this year and will next focus detailed commercial review on roughly 870 improved commercial parcels and about 200 vacant commercial parcels.

“We did a lot of that,” Yule said of cleaning sales records and characteristics, noting the county had found major inconsistencies in land data submitted to the Board of Equalization last year. He explained a revaluation of land characteristics and a cleaning of sales records will help ensure property taxes reflect relative values across properties rather than broad market swings.

Yule walked commissioners through valuation mechanics, using two short “quiz” questions to show how percentage changes in value affect tax rolls. Asked, “If all values in the county raised 10%, what’s the net tax increase due to the increase in value?” he answered, “There is no increase.” He used the example to emphasize that taxes shift when individual parcels move out of alignment with the rest of the tax rolls.

On commercial valuation, the county did not perform a full commercial reset but worked with the association’s commercial appraisers to “center” values and then capped changes to limit dramatic shifts: commercial parcels were bounded to rise at most 20% and fall at most 5% in the initial work, Yule said. The county plans a deeper, parcel-level commercial review next year with the outside appraiser team led by John Ulibarri, a commercial appraiser referenced by staff.

Peters told commissioners the $45,000 agreement was substantially less than the first sealed bid the county received, which she said was about $240,000. Commissioners noted the arrangement saved the county money while getting the work done within an accelerated schedule. The county reported receiving preliminary statistics to the state and intends to load values into the county assessment system as scheduled.

The commission approved the ratification motion by voice vote.

Less-critical details: Peters said the agreement was signed quickly because of timing needs; Yule said the office had cleaned prior error reports and would continue five years of sales cleaning for future assessment cycles. Commissioners thanked the assessor’s staff for the volume of work ahead of statutory deadlines.

The assessor said the assessment roll “will not be perfect” and invited anyone curious about the mass-valuation process to review the methods, while reiterating the office’s aim to produce a fair and accurate tax roll.

The commission’s approval ratifies the county’s commercial-appraisal contract and authorizes the assessor’s office to continue implementing corrected characteristics and the planned commercial review.