2008 Budget Book - Kitsap County Government

General Government
Assessor
Purpose:
The Assessor is required by law to distribute the property tax burden within Kitsap County. This is done
by equitably valuing property, setting individual taxing district levies based on those values, administering
tax relief (exemption) programs, and maintaining all assessment records. The above services shall be
provided in a courteous efficient and understandable manner.
2007 Accomplishments:
• Revalued all properties in Kitsap County.
• Physically inspected all residential and commercial properties in the extreme north end and the
southwest end of Kitsap County
• Added all newly built commercial and residential improvements and all remodels to the tax roll.
• Processed all received personal property listings and made estimates on all accounts where
listings were not received.
• Added all new subdivisions to the tax roll and processed all requested boundary line adjustments,
splits and merges.
• Audited 25% of all senior/disabled exemptions while adding and deleting accounts as appropriate
and/or requested. Adjusted 783 exemption accounts due to new law allowing for more than one
acre in many cases.
• Responded to all Board of Equalization, Board of Tax Appeals and Superior Court appeal
petitions and hearings.
• Processed 106 removals from “current use”.
• Provided public access to all records associated with the assessment process.
• Altered appraisal neighborhoods and valuation models to recognize new and expanded urban
growth areas.
• Processed 382 destroyed property claims following the December 3 rd storm.
2008 Goals and Objectives:
We will contribute to Effective and Efficient County Services by:
• Do first 8 items above as done in 2006/2007 with exception of the physical inspection area (#2)
shifting to Bainbridge, Suquamish and Indianola.
• Encourage increased use of our new web-based personal property reporting system to satisfy
customer demand and achieve greater efficiencies in our operation. Add a feature to send
notification of value via email.
• Improve existing processes for sales analysis and model calibration in order to improve all
measurements of uniformity (e.g. COD).
• Achieve roll closure in accordance with statutory deadlines.
• Process approximately 500 new senior/disabled exemptions applications annually.
• Merge all building only mobile home accounts to the associated real property account, if
ownership is the same, to a achieve operational efficiency and improved taxpayer understanding.
• Improve the “new construction” process to make better use of the DCD and city inspection
information.
• Alter the way in which “current use” site values are calculated to better represent a market value.
• Reduce the amount of postage used by converting to e-mail notification where practical and
allowed.
• Revalue all county parcels rezoned as part of the 10-year comprehensive plan update.
• Add a “comparable sales” search capability to our internet website.
• Achieve a paperless Board of Equalization process.
• Emailing of personal property listings and value notices.
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