Assessors Recalculate Land Values Appraiser Hopes To End Cougar Gulch Appeals

The Kootenai County Assessors Office will change 67 Cougar Gulch homeowners’ land values to end a mass appeal that sparked a bitter internal county feud.

Deputy Assessor Mike McDowell said appraisers have developed a new way to calculate property values on rural land south of Coeur d’Alene and will use that method next year.

The office also will offer to apply the same approach retroactively to this year’s assessments - figures the office previously had defended with vigor.

On average, the change is expected to reduce the taxable value of most residents’ property by about $5,000 each year, McDowell said.

Appraisers plan to meet individually with the homeowners in coming weeks. McDowell said he hoped most will see the offer as an “equitable” compromise.

“Our appraisers have been working on this for months,” he said.

Earlier this year, Cougar Gulch residents became hostile over a shift in the way appraisers assessed their land. The change left property values essentially the same, but increased the taxable portion.

Faced with the same issues in 67 appeals - and believing the assessor’s office had erred - county commissioners responded by rolling back all 67 homeowners’ property values.

The assessor’s staff feared that change would be unfair to other area homeowners who had not appealed. So the assessor’s office appealed the commissioners’ decision.

The dispute sparked a bitter public feud between the assessor’s staff and county commissioners.

The assessor’s staff accused commissioners of messing around in something they didn’t understand.

Commissioners countered by suggesting the assessor’s staff was out of control and breaking the law.

The battle has left both sides publicity shy.

Rather than discuss the new proposal in public at an open meeting, appraisers met with each county commissioner individually Monday. That way they could legally exclude area residents and the press.

“I have no intention of skirting any open meetings taking place,” Assessor Marv Vandenberg said. “Our primary concern is we want the property owners to hear it first from us.”

He declined to provide more details about the proposal.

Commissioners, who also refused to discuss details, said they liked what they saw.

“As a nonprofessional, the methodology looked pretty good to me,” Commissioner Dick Compton said.

Commissioner Dick Panabaker said, “I think they’re pretty much where they should have been a year ago.”

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: CHANGE The change is expected to reduce the taxable value of most residents’ property by about $5,000 each year.