Legislators questioning county assessments about errors
By Joseph Hennessy
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KANSAS CITY, Missouri (KCTV) — Jackson County’s property assessment error that has more than 54,000 residents appealing will be in the spotlight Monday afternoon.
Representatives from Tyler Technologies, the third-party vendor who helped run the assessments, will have to answer questions from Jackson County Legislators at 3 p.m. Tyler Technologies agreed to help run a competent and accurate assessment after receiving millions of dollars for their assistance.
The more than 54,000 homeowners’ appealing statistics shatter all previous records.
Our KCT5 Investigative Department recently brought a data error to light that 550 homes were wrongly assessed at the same amount of $356,270.
The county admits to the error and mistake and says they’ll fix the problem. They wrote, “The Jackson County, Missouri, Assessor’s Office has successfully rectified a data error that caused multiple parcels to receive identical valuations. By Sunday, September 10, the assessed values of the majority of parcels that were mistakenly overvalued due to this input error will be corrected to reflect their fair market values.”
One property was a million-dollar home, some were vacant lots, and some were purchased anywhere from $100,000 to $150,000.
Homeowners continue to notify the KCTV5 Investigative Department of problems regarding the appeals process.
The department reports on concerns that true physical inspections did not take place and asks questions about whether this is a limited data error or just one example of a lack of quality control.
There is a class-action lawsuit filed against the county questioning the inspections on the thousands of homes with assessments higher than 15%. Physical inspections will be one thing the state audit reviews.
Missouri State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick said, “There are a lot of a lot of red flags and a lot of questions. Generally, there are things that need to be looked at. There are certainly concerns and I think that the people of Jackson County’s concerns are very valid.”
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