Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Property Assessment topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Clallam County BOE examiners hear property-assessment appeals, recommend sustaining most assessor values
Summary
Hearing examiners at a Clallam County Board of Equalization session heard a day of property-assessment appeals — including contested valuations for individual lots and large manufactured-home communities — and announced recommendations largely to sustain assessor valuations; formal orders will be issued by the county commissioners.
Hearing examiners for the Clallam County Board of Equalization heard testimony on more than a half-dozen property-assessment appeals and said they will forward recommendations to the Clallam County Commissioners, who will issue the final board orders.
The session opened with examiners explaining they do not make final decisions but recommend outcomes after hearing petitioners and assessor staff. Multiple homeowners and several commercial appellants presented arguments challenging assessed values, and the assessor's office defended its sales-based and mass-appraisal methods.
Why it matters: property-assessment decisions determine tax bills and can hinge on technical valuation choices — such as whether to treat a parcel as a saleable residential site today, or to discount unfinished developments pending lease-up. The hearing grouped routine homeowner appeals alongside complex commercial valuation disputes, including two large manufactured-home communities.
What happened: petitioners described physical or regulatory constraints they say reduce market value, and assessor staff described comparables and standard county valuation methods. For example, John Fleming told examiners his South Mount Angeles Road parcels were extremely steep, surrounded on three sides by Department of Natural Resources land, and effectively inaccessible for much of the year; he urged an in-person inspection or a geohazard report to reduce assessed value. In that case the assessor said its statistical analysis and comparables supported a substantial but not total reduction and invited additional evidence.
On larger disputes, appellants Michael Ryan and Jake Bond of Ryan LLC argued for income-based and cost-to-lease-up approaches for manufactured-home communities; Jake Bond presented detailed per-pad costs — excavation, utilities, site work and city impact fees — and said those non-reimbursable costs materially lower what a market buyer would pay today. The assessor's office responded that mass-appraisal sales and sales-per-site comparables underpin its values and that, while lease-up discounts are appropriate, the fee appraisal submitted by the appellant appeared to reflect enterprise or business value more than what a typical market buyer would pay under mass-appraisal standards.
Examiners' procedural note: the hearing panel deferred making final orders and said examiners will caucus and forward recommendations to the Board of Clallam County Commissioners; petitioners will receive written board orders in the mail (the examiners noted a likely two-week window for issuance).
Votes at a glance (examiners' recommendations read into the record): - Files 2025-183, -184, -185 (Fleming): recommended to sustain (no reduction beyond assessor adjustments noted in the hearing record). - Files 2025-43 and 2025-44 (Kenneth Bauer): recommended to sustain the assessor’s adjustments. - File 2025-190 (Daniel and Brenda Bigger): recommended to sustain the assessor's valuation. - File 2025-192 (CC West Alder, manufactured-home community): recommended to sustain the assessor's value. - File 2025-193 (CC Lavender Meadows, manufactured-home community): recommended to sustain the assessor's value. - File 2025-203 (Shepherd): recommended adjustment per assessor recommendation (specific adjustment recorded in the hearing file).
Representative quotes from the hearing: - "We're not here to make a decision. We'll make a recommendation," said a hearing examiner (the panel member reminding petitioners of the process). - "If you would get a geohazard report that indicates that it can't be developed, we can always readjust evaluation and further reduce the rate," an assessor representative said when discussing steep parcels and landslide risk. - "These are the costs that anyone would have to incur in order to continue the lease up of the property," Jake Bond said, listing per-lot excavation, utilities and permitting expenses for an unfinished manufactured-home park. - "We're valuing sites leased at full value — $130,000 a pad — and then discounting unleased pads for lease-up," an assessor official said, describing the office's discounted pad-price approach.
What comes next: examiners will caucus and deliver written recommendations to the Board of Clallam County Commissioners, which issues the final board orders. Petitioners were reminded of appeal rights and the timeline in the board orders.
The hearing record and petitioner exhibits will form the basis of the examiners' recommendation; petitioners should expect a mailed order with instructions and potential further appeal steps.
