Klickitat County Assessor's Office Mass Appraisal Report

Board since 2001 as a method in assisting the Assessor’s office in implementing assessmentguidelines for current use values for farm and agriculture parcels. The advisory committee does notgive advice regarding the valuation of specific parcels however; they supply the Assessor with adviceon typical crops, land quality, leases and expenses. This information assists the Assessor indetermining the appropriate current use values (RCW 84.34.065). In a random selection ofagriculture lands, we found that many current use values haven’t change since 2001 and the 2004audit by the Department of Revenue found “some accounts have had the same value since 1999.”The 2011 Open Space Advisory Board recommended rental rates to the Assessor at their May 3,2012 meeting. All of Open Space Advisory Board meetings are open to the public and all minutes ofthe meetings are available online. The complete lease rates and subsequent rental rates areavailable online and in the separate Mass Appraisal Report of Current Use.In addition, the Department of Revenue required that all ‘current use farm and agriculture lands lessthan 20 acres,’ ‘current use timber,” current use farm and agriculture conservation, ‘current use openspace” and designated forest lands home sites to be assessed at true and fair market value. Priorvalues for these home sites were at a lower integral home site value only allowed by statute forparcels 20 acres or more in the farm and agricultural land classification. In addition, prior Board ofCounty Commissioners resolution was unclear on the value of the home site of those enrolled in thecurrent use open space land. Now the home site value is clearly at true and fair market value whilethe land is valued at 50% of the true and fair market value. These parcels have been recoded toreflect the true and fair market values resulting in a significant change in assessed value for theseparcels.Preliminary Testing Results:WAC 458-07-010 The Washington state Constitution requires that all taxes be uniform upon the same class ofproperty within the territorial limits of the authority levying the tax. In order to comply with this constitutionalmandate and ensure that all taxes are uniform, all real property must be valued in a manner consistent withthis principle of uniformity. Also, to comply with statutory and case law, the county assessor must value alltaxable real property in the county on a regular, systematic, and continuous basis.Klickitat County now values all taxable real property in the county annually. To help determine if theproperty tax is distributed fairly for local governments and taxing districts, IAAO recommends usingratio studies to measure mass appraisal performance. The Ratio studies measure two primaryaspects of mass appraisal accuracy level and uniformity. In a ratio study, market values arerepresented by qualified individual market transactions or sales prices. The ratios used in a ratiostudy are formed by dividing appraised values made for tax purposes by actual sales prices. Forexample, a property appraised for tax purposes at $80,000 and sold for $100,000 has a ratio of .80 or80 percent. This measures the Level of Assessments and the Assessor is required by statue to valueat 1.00 or 100% percent of market value. Level of Assessment relates to the overall or averagerelationship between assessed values and market valuesUniformity of Assessments relates to the consistency or equity of individual assessments. Uniformitymeasures the extent to which properties are assessed uniformly or at the same percentage of marketvalue. Good uniformity is associated with equitable assessments. Poor uniformity implies inequitableassessments. To measure the uniformity or the fair equitable treatment of individual propertiesadditional statistical analysis is conducted on the ratios. The most common measure is the coefficientof dispersion (COD), which provides a measure of appraisal uniformity independent of the level of