Lane County's (Ore) Property tax is unfairly administered!
Recently, for reasons I won't go into here, I researched my neighbors property taxes and compared them to our own. Realizing improvements can vary widely from one property to another, I concentrated on raw land values, assessments and taxes on those raw lands. The lands are all similar, all zoned the same, all on the same hillside, all contiguous and none have gold mines, lake or river front, oil wells or anything that would make them stand out from the others. I also looked at variations in assessed value as a percentage of real market value and then variations on the rate charged (per thousand) as a percentage of assessed value.
I was surprised to find that there is no rhyme or reason to the way taxes are charged. Or if there is, it is not apparent from looking at these figures. Our raw land (according to the county) is valued at two and three times our adjoining neighbors raw land. According to the county, we have very valuable dirt!
Below is a spread sheet comparing twelve properties (2008) and a map showing the relationship of each property. The properties are all contiguous, and surrounding our property. Notice that none of the property owners are treated the same. In the red box, notice the variations (high, low, difference, median, average) of the various columns. In column "O" notice the WIDE variation in the actual tax (land only, per acre) of each property. Column "J" shows the WIDE variation in assessed value as a percentage of real market value.
The county assessors office tells me that tax measures passed by the voters is the reason for the inequities, but I really don't care what the reasons are.....I only care that we are not being treated equally or fairly. The wife and I should not be singled out to pay double our fair share in supporting the county.
