Hernando County value adjustment hearings: multiple residential appeals heard; magistrate to issue recommendations

HERNANDO COUNTY, Fla. — The Hernando County Value Adjustment Board convened on Nov. 6, 2025, for a scheduled series of hearings before Special Magistrate Robert Sunny, who heard evidence and cross‑examination on multiple residential tax valuation petitions from property owners and representatives.

Heidi Prouse of the Hernando County VAB opened the session and introduced Magistrate Sunny, after which staff and witnesses were sworn. “So we are officially, legally, sworn in,” the magistrate said as the proceedings began.

The property appraiser’s office presented sales‑comparison packets for each parcel in turn. Appraisers Doug Mack and Brandon Jimenez walked through parcel record cards, selected comparables and their methodologies — including adjusted square footage, feature (garage/pool/porch) adjustments and countywide cost‑of‑sale or time adjustments recommended by the Florida Department of Revenue. For petition 269, for example, the county’s weighted mean for the selected comparables was 70.09 percent, which the appraiser used to justify its 2025 just value figure.

Petitioners were represented in most cases by Stephanie Garcia of Ryan. She described Ryan’s typical process of using up to six comparables and deriving an indicated value from the mean of the adjusted comparables, and she pressed the county’s appraisers on specific adjustments (land, features and time adjustments). At several points the parties disagreed about whether particular comparable sales should be excluded as outliers (for example, sales identified by the property appraiser as potential flips or condition‑impaired sales, and at least one sale flagged as related to a sinkhole).

Magistrate Sunny repeatedly asked the appraisers to explain how they derived weighted means, medians and per‑square‑foot rates and to confirm whether rates reported in the packets were based on adjusted square footage or heated living area. The magistrate emphasized that feature values listed on the property record card must be added back when comparing to per‑square‑foot calculations in some petitioner methodologies.

A few procedural matters interrupted the schedule. Petition 277 was briefly held when the petitioner and the property appraiser could not confirm that a written evidence packet had been exchanged; the magistrate allowed the petitioner to fax missing materials during the lunch break or to withdraw the petition. The hearing also included a short recess called by the magistrate.

No formal votes or final rulings were recorded during the telephonic hearing. The magistrate said written recommendations and findings would be prepared and transmitted after the administrative review process. Heidi Prouse said the VAB aims to finalize and circulate recommendations for legal sufficiency review within about two weeks, after which parties will receive the magistrate’s written recommendations. “We’ll send them for review for legal sufficiency, and then we’ll transmit them to the petitioner and the property appraiser’s office,” Prouse said.

What happened next: The magistrate closed the public hearing and noted the administrative schedule for issuing written recommendations and that the hearing transcript and supporting materials are public record. Parties may expect the official recommendations to be distributed for review and final action by the board in the period described by staff.

No decisions were entered on the record during the Nov. 6 hearing; the magistrate will file his written recommendations after reviewing the record and any supplemental materials provided during the break.