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To:      Letter to the Editor
               <VIEWPOINT@chron.com>
Sent:      Sunday, January 07, 2001 2:56 PM
Subject: Alert Citizens to Pending Property Tax appraisal Activity - 2001

Gentlemen:

Law suit Number 2000-47893 in Judge Sherry Radack's Court has an Affidavit submitted in a motion by Teresa S. Terry, Assistant Chief Appraiser for the Harris County Appraisal District (HCAD).  Among other things, the Affidavit contains the following:

1.6 million properties in Harris County appraised by the District in 2000.

As at 12-13-00, there were 125,800 property owner protests filed with the Appraisal Review Board, (ARB) "the Board", for 2000.

Breaking News: 12-31-07  Over 350,000 protests filed!

Why?

Less than 100 of those protests were pending at 12-13-00.  Apparently there were many no shows or protests settled other than by appearing at informal meetings/formal hearings.

The number of protests handled by informal meeting:   79,586
The number of protests handled by formal hearing:       18,928
Total protests handled:                                                     98,514

The number of accounts changed by informal meeting:  52,118
The number of accounts changed by formal hearings:    11,059
Total accounts changed:                                                    63,177

Aggregate percentage of accounts changed:                   64.13%

Accounts in the entire County Universe Potentially in error:  1.0 million.
(1.6 times .64).

  Harris County Appraisal District (HCAD) Board of directors has full Command and Control  of the ARB (Appraisal Review Board) appraisal Review process.

    This includes taking applications, interviewing, choosing to hire, scheduling for training at the State level, providing some trainers at the State level, providing any subsequent training beyond the minimum provided at the state level, providing day to day control during the review process, providing evaluation and counseling, and providing some or all of the record keeping and administrative support required to make the system work.  

   This level of command and control makes HCAD (Harris County Appraisal District) and ARB (Appraisal Review Board) one organization, with the ARB at the full beck and call of HCAD.

How can  protest hearings be objective and fair under those circumstances? The bias in the system makes this highly unlikely.

This supports the suggestion that over 1 million accounts are in error.  First, most account differences will amount to hundreds of dollars net tax.  Not many people are willing to take two half days or more off work, losing pay in the process, to file a protest, go to the HCAD (Harris County Appraisal District) office to pick up evidence, then appear at a protest hearing that can easily cost a day at work.  

This bias causes most to throw up their hands and elect not to fight city hall.  HCAD (Harris County Appraisal District) and ARB (Appraisal Review Board) know this and use it to maximum advantage penalizing the taxpayers versus the law.  A review of negative surveys turned in to Roland Altinger suggest they knowingly make false decisions, ignore taxpayer evidence and use faulty data in the process.

The above suggests all taxpayers should be on the alert for 2001 notices which will be sent out later in the spring.  It also suggests each and every taxpayer should bite the bullet and take the time to protest their appraised values from HCAD (Harris County Appraisal District) for the 2001 tax year.  The only way to change the system is to meet it head on.