January 13, 2010 in City

Short-handed assessor wants help from above

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Courtesy of Pictometry International photo

The assessor is hoping the county will pay $90,000 a year to hire a company to take aerial photos. Courtesy of Pictometry International
(Full-size photo)

Spokane County residents may want to avoid backyard sunbathing in April.

That’s when county Assessor Ralph Baker wants to take a series of high-resolution, low-altitude aerial photographs that promise to make goose pimples visible around the globe.

At least, the photos would show new swimming pools, cabanas, decks and workshops.

Baker wants the pictures for updating property values and hopes to shoot them in April before trees leaf out and hide the evidence.

He would post the photos on his office’s Web site as well as make them available to other government agencies – including the county Department of Building and Planning, which would be interested in construction done without permits.

The assessor’s Web site already has ground-level photos of the fronts of homes and businesses throughout the county, but they don’t reveal much.

The new aerial photos Baker proposed Tuesday would allow appraisers to see what’s behind fences and hedges without time-consuming site visits and confrontations with unfriendly dogs.

Baker has access to high-altitude “ortho” photographs used in the county’s digital mapping program, but he said their straight-down view doesn’t offer much more than his curbside snapshots.

He wants the oblique-angle photographs offered by a company called Pictometry International. Vice President Erin Ford said the Rochester, N.Y., company uses a patented process to provide five different close-up views of each property.

County officials are unaware of any other company offering such court-admissible photography. The high-quality images would allow appraisers to measure structures.

Contractors also would find the photos useful, Baker told county commissioners.

A rain-gutter installer could prepare a bid without a tape measure. A roofer could calculate square footage without leaving the office.

Police and fire agencies would find the photos helpful in emergencies, Baker added. However, no other public officials lined up to help pay the $180,000 biennial cost.

“Everybody loves the data, but it’s tough economic times right now,” county digital mapping manager Ian Von Essen told commissioners.

Agencies that are laying off workers can’t afford aerial photographs, he said.

But that’s exactly why Baker wants them. He said the detailed views would help him cope with the loss of five appraisers and one support staff member since last year.

Baker said his staff shrank from 54 to 48 because of a $347,523 reduction from last year’s $3.8 million assessor’s office budget. No one was laid off, but some junior employees jumped ship before they could be thrown overboard.

With only 22 appraisers left, Baker is struggling to keep his own head above water.

He said he has “no doubt” he will fall behind this year in his duty to reappraise properties every six years and estimate new values annually.

“I don’t have the people to get it all done,” he said. “We’ll crash here soon, I think, when we start getting into reappraisals.”

Pictometry’s aerial photos won’t eliminate all on-site inspections, but they can help his staff cope, Baker said.

Commissioners were sympathetic but said they couldn’t provide any money before next year.

Chairman Mark Richard wondered whether efficiencies could offset the cost of the photo service by allowing further staff reductions.

Baker said such a prediction would be “a gutsy move” he was unprepared to make.

Commissioners asked Baker to look into the possibility of sharing costs with an Avista-led consortium that provides traditional orthographic photos for digital mapping.

Von Essen said Spokane County participates in the consortium, and its share of the cost is $25,000 to $40,000 a year. He said Pictometry could provide those photos, but the price quoted to Baker would be doubled.

Mapping programs need new photos annually, not every other year as state law permits for appraisal purposes, Von Essen said.

Ford said Pictometry would help Baker get his photos this year and be paid for them later.

Nine comments on this story so far. Add yours!

• 

  Censored on January 13 at 12:56 a.m.

  Interesting… When you buy a home or property you own the airel rights too. Unless other claims are made, the way I understand my properties is that I own the air and the minerals under as long as no one else laid claim which would be on title.

  Gov. trying to force their way into your privacy again. They are paid to do visits, not spy. Our freedom has left us, for us to allow them to spy into our yards without warrants will be a travesty!

  As tax payers already footing the bill for the W/S/G that continues to reach the skies with their taxes and fees.. now they want to peer into our yards as if we DONT own them, yet they tax us for said land?

  Other Agencies? Fire? You really think we buy that? Try Police and feds so they know what they are up against when the day comes the people of the United States say NO MORE!

  Thanks Ms. Govna!

• 

  Censored on January 13 at 1:35 a.m.

  I stand corrected. The following excerpt is from a encyclopedia site,

  “Aerial photographs are considered outside the realm of privacy. Therefore anything witnessed from the view of an aircraft is considered public domain. An exception is when an aircraft uses thermal probes, as found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States.[1]

  Aviation photography, Aerial imagery, Kite aerial photography, Orthophoto, Remote sensing.”(source http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/aerial%20photography/id/1904068)

  Grow trees! Lots of them. Don’t let them see your mower either they may add a fuel tax if they know it gets good milage.

• 

  philipgregory on January 13 at 7:03 a.m.

  This is an INVASION of people’s right to privacy and should be FORBIDDEN.

  Hopefully someone with enough money will sue the county.

• 

  polistra on January 13 at 7:36 a.m.

  Orwell grossly underestimated the totalitarian’s addiction to information. In ‘1984’ there were areas, even whole parts of town, where the telescreens didn’t penetrate. Winston Smith could find a corner of his room where he could write without being seen.

  Not so today. Modern totalitarians have resolved the technical difficulties that limited Orwell’s horrible vision.

• 

  jjb on January 13 at 8:25 a.m.

  It seems in the assessment process that the more uniform the more fair. If aerial pictures were used then that may level the playing field for people who don’t have fences and for people who do get building permits when required. With technology like this, perhaps two identical properties in the same neighborhood can be assessed uniformly whether one has a fence, dog or the evaluation happens in april or december.

  Nothing endures but change.
  -Heraclitus

• 

  rob_brewer on January 13 at 8:31 a.m.

  Some of this exist to a degree. Bing (http://www.bing.com/maps) already. Once you are zoomed in far enough, you can enable the Bird’s Eye view under Aerial.

  And for philipgregory, Censored seems to be correct, it is considered outside the realm of privacy and courts have already upheld that it is not an invasion of privacy, nor should it be forbidden. While I am not an attorney, it is my understanding that the body of law covering rights to privacy exclude those areas visible to the public. I would imagine that since people flying in various aircraft can already visibily see the exterior of buildings, this qualifies as a public area. I would not expect to see suits against the county for this to succeed.

• 

  liarsinnews on January 13 at 10:26 a.m.

  I wonder if Baker is wearing a ski mask as he intends to tell folks like me, my property has not changed in value when I visited with him last year. Tell that to some folks living near me who lost thousands of dollars. My guess is this year he will try to BS me saying my real estate has increased in value. Vote this guy out of office please, before he financially ruins us.

• 

  ChuckU on February 27 at 11:14 a.m.

  I find the notion that the county “owns” the rights for me to do and build as I damned well please ridiculous.

  Turn the tables on these thieves: Photographic evidence of the plane used, the pilot and the cameraman, posted on the Web would be “useful photos”, including the picture and residential address of the chief thief behind this scheme.

• 

  rapidfire on February 19 at 3:22 p.m.

  As usual the Spokane population had an election that would have changed this. With the backing of many freedom advocates, challenger Vicki Horton ran against the machine with the sound philosophy of not allowing this type of intrusion.
  Mr Baker has been mentioned in the RPS fiasco and of giving special favor to ahem….shall we say well placed folks in the line-up of power brokers in the area, both Republicans and Democrats (not that it matters here). Perhaps you will pay attention in the near future, unless you want to just pay more taxes instead.