Mark Rypien Enters The Tax Appeal Game Football Star Protests $596,000 Value Placed On His Riverfront Home In Post Falls

Mark Rypien pantomimed putting on football pads Monday as he prepared to scrimmage over his property tax assessment.

Like many area residents, the onetime Super Bowl star with a riverfront home in Post Falls feared he was headed for wallet-bruising tax hikes.

Unlike most residents, however, Rypien’s home was valued at $596,000 - precursor to a five-digit tax bill.

“We’re like anybody else when it comes to taxes: You sit back and take your lumps,” Rypien said. “But you can only take them so long.”

The affable free agent who made $750,000 playing for the St. Louis Rams last year is one of about 250 Kootenai County residents appealing their assessments.

The petitions affect more than 500 properties, down from last year’s record number of appeals, involving 940 parcels.

As a result, county commissioners have canceled nearly everything else for the next several weeks. The lineup of half-hour hearings is expected to keep them busy 10 hours a day until mid-July.

While each hearing is different, the issues are often the same.

Monday was no exception.

Rypien joined about a half-dozen of his Riverside Harbor neighbors Monday to find out why their homes were assessed so high.

Neighbor Bob Colburn complained that his house was valued higher than some on his street because he has 8 more feet of river frontage. But that’s only because the bank winds in his yard, he argued.

“If you measured it straight across, it’d be 90 feet, just like the rest of the lots,” he said.

It’s a familiar complaint, said Deputy Assessor Mike McDowell, because county appraisers take lot dimensions from deeds.

“We’re not surveyors,” he said. “We rely on the professionals.”

Because few properties with homes have sold in the harbor in recent years, it’s difficult for appraisers to determine valuations. That leads to problems like the one facing resident Mel Curland.

The county’s assessed valuation of his home was $449,553. A private bank appraisal put it at $392,000. Rypien and the other Harbor residents also complained that separate land valuations shot up dramatically - up to $54,000 - when a house was built on the lot.

“They (appraisers) are saying it goes up just by virtue of planting grass seed,” said tax guru-turned-candidate Ron Rankin, who assisted the neighbors.

“It’s not like we planted geraniums or anything,” Rypien added.

But McDowell said land on the market always rises with a nice home on it: “We see it time after time.”

Commissioners will make a decision in coming weeks.

Rypien, meanwhile, following his first public foray into the tax debate, said he would find more enjoyable ways to spend the rest of his off-season.

“There’s a golf course out there with my name on it,” he said.

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