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Miami County resident tells committee algorithm and county choices inflated land values, drove wave of appeals
Summary
Jennifer Williams told the Special Committee on Taxation she tracked 144 properties in a 9‑square‑mile area and concluded land values rose sharply between 2021 and 2025; she said many residents appealed and won, and urged review of county weighting and time‑trend practices used by appraisers.
Jennifer Williams, a resident and community data‑gatherer, told the committee she has tracked property values in a 9‑square‑mile rural area spanning the Miami/Johnson county line and said land‑value calculations that Miami County used rose sharply after 2021.
Williams said base‑acre assumptions used by Miami County rose from roughly $15,000–$18,000 per acre in 2021 to $66,000 per acre by 2025 in parts of the county, while adjacent Johnson County values remained substantially lower. “Miami County used to be similar to Johnson County back in 2021 … we were somewhere around the 15 to $18,000 an acre,” Williams told the committee. “In 2022, that went up to 33,000. In 2023, that went up to 60,000. In 2024, that went up to 66,000.”
Williams said she maintains a dataset of 144 parcels in that nine‑square‑mile area and that recorded land value for the group rose from about $9.5 million in 2021 to about $28.5 million in 2025. She said many property owners appealed their appraisals in 2023 and prevailed; her materials show a cluster in a subdivision where 30 of about 60 homeowners appealed in 2023 and a combined reduction followed.
Williams criticized time‑weighting and comp selection in the county’s model, saying counties had been applying relatively large time adjustments (she cited examples of 10–12% adjustments) and other weights that, in her view, inflated comparables. She also raised concerns that county appraisers’ use of common percentage changes (her dataset showed many properties increased by an identical 5% in 2024 and 6% in 2025) suggested model-driven adjustments rather than case‑by‑case market shifts.
Williams told the committee she is not proposing a specific statutory fix in her testimony but asked lawmakers to review how counties set base‑acre values, time‑trend weights and comp selection rules and to ensure transparency and availability of the appraisal worksheets for taxpayers and their representatives.
Her testimony prompted lawmakers to ask for the datasets and for PVD and county staff to review the county’s modeling choices and appeals history.
