Assessment Practices Review Panel - St. Louis County

- Continued budget demands and aid reductions for St. Louis County, cities, and
townships, resulting in decreased assessment staff, increased workloads and as a result
pressure on the overall quality of the assessment process.
- Ever-changing property assessment and classification legislation which consumes the
county assessor’s resources to implement and explain to taxpayers.
- Different interpretations of valuation and assessment models between local and
county assessors.
- Increase in the number of appeals to the County Board of Appeal and Equalization
and to the Minnesota Tax Court.
- Succession planning for an aging local assessor workforce.
Township related challenges to Timely, Uniform , and Fair
Challenges specific to some townships now and in the past:
- Lack of timely completion, consistency, and accuracy of property assessments and in
some cases the assessment work not being done at all:
o Permitted new construction not timely assessed or not assessed.
o Permitted building additions and improvements not timely assessed or not
assessed.
- Some townships awarding contracts to the low bidder for contract assessments,
focusing on price rather than quality of the final product.
- Some local assessors taking on more parcels and jurisdictions than they can
reasonably serve, which can impact the quality of the final product.
- Limited enforcement capabilities by the county assessor.
City of Duluth related challenges to Timely, Uniform , and Fair
Challenges specific to the city of Duluth:
- According to the DoR the city is understaffed and needs three to four additional
qualified appraisers to handle commercial/industrial property.
- Quintile assessment requirements are not being met:
o Minn. Stat. 273.08 requires the assessor to actually view and determine market
value at maximum intervals of five years or 1/5. The City of Duluth operates
on a 1/7 schedule for residential property. Most commercial and industrial
property has not had a site visit in 10-15 years.
- In the past, state-ordered increases in value were added to property structures and not
to the land, leaving the perception that the land on some parcels is undervalued.
- Lack of adequate staff to complete the quintile requirement.
- Lack of adequate staff to address current and potential future tax court cases which
may be the underlying reason for the increased volume in tax court cases over the past
three years within the City of Duluth.
County related challenges to Timely, Uniform, and Fair
Challenges specific to the County:
- Limited authority to manage the quality of the local assessments while being
responsible for the overall quality and equalization of county assessments.
- Adequate enforcement of violations for local assessor for under or non-performance
- Annual and unknown shifts in workload for the county due to townships switching
between local contract appraisers and county appraisers.
St. Louis County Assessment Practices Review Panel Draft Report February 2012 Page 4