Posted on 11/17/2023 2:48:35 PM PST by ProtectOurFreedom
A typo resulting in a multimillion dollar property value assessment error is expected to affect multiple taxing districts in Kootenai County and delay the distribution of property tax notices. County elected officials convened Thursday for a special meeting to address an overvalued lakefront property in the Rockford Bay Area.
An assessor valuation amendment signed Oct. 24 by commissioners and Chief Deputy Assessor Ben Crotinger indicates the front footage of the parcel, was mistakenly entered by an appraiser as 6,966 feet instead of 69.66 feet. The error caused the property’s valuation to jump from $1.4 million in 2022 to $54.3 million this year. The property’s amended market value is $634,120.
“It is a human error that occurred,” Kootenai County Assessor Bèla Kovacs said. Kovacs said the valuation was reviewed by multiple employees in the assessor’s office, including the appraiser, a manager and “business intelligence analysts,” but no one caught the error until October.
The valuation change affects seven taxing districts: Kootenai County, the Coeur d’Alene School District, Worley Highway District #4, Worley Fire, Kootenai County EMS, North Idaho College and the Community Library Network. The change’s impact on those taxing districts is estimated to be between $200,000 and $250,000. The corrected levy rates have not yet been calculated.
(Excerpt) Read more at cdapress.com ...
Then to top it all off the homeowner's assessed valuation went DOWN from $1.4 million to $0.6 million, a 57% DECREASE!
What the article does not say is whether the home owner died of a heart attack when he opened his tax bill and saw his assessed value jumped from $1.4 million to $54 million.
And not one of the seven taxing districts that were going to receive a tax windfall asked "Why are we getting so much more tax money? Is this real? Should be develop a spending plan for this windfall?" Nope, they went ahead with big spending plans assuming the county was correct.
Everybody check your tax bills carefully
They probably have new software that uses common core math
How come the error never favors the taxpayer???
Working from home.
Miss L. James would charge them with a crime if she lived there.
I am finding that more and more employees are incompetent and that is not only in the government sector.
When government mandated the covid vaccine for many industries and government agencies, many experienced workers who were in their 50’s opted to retire vs getting the jab.
And then we happen the ill-educated youngsters replacing those workers.
Gee, what go wrong with that????
“”””And then we happen the ill-educated youngsters replacing those workers.””””
And then we HAVE the ill-educated youngsters replacing those workers.
auto-complete needs to be banned!!!!!
When the rare error in the taxpayer’s benefit happens the taxpayer can be criminally charged taking advantage of it. When the government makes the mistake the taxpayer still has to pay what the government says while they ‘try’ to fix their “mistake.” I am in that boat right now with the IRS sending me multi thousand dollar bills for the past three years plus penalties and interest.
I think you are onto something there.
I found a lot of innumeracy late in my career (I retired in 2018). As an engineer, I always did a lot of mental math and all good engineers learned how to bound a problem to arrive at a reasonable answer very quickly. You recognized that an answer (no matter how precise) that was out of the bounds of reasonableness had to be wrong.
All of those arts do seem to be gone. We are in the era where kids (later adults) always reflexively reach for the calculator instead of attempting mental math and asking “Is this a reasonable answer?”
That is a very likely explanation for this incredibly stupid error.
And the fact that a number of people looked at it and blessed the answer makes it even worse!
We had a big IRS mistake and they were hounding us. My wife paid them to get them off our backs and intended to file an amended return to get our money back. I need to ask her if she did that!
How come the error never favors the taxpayer???
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In 1993 my local phone co. was bought out by another phone co. and month after month we were over charged and my wife spent hours on the phone with the new company correcting the errors and finally blew up and asked them why, if these are errors, why has there never been an error in our favor?
That’s when we dumped our land line and I cut the phone line from the pole to our house and removed every jack in our house, haven’t had a land line since and have never regretted it.
“”””I think you are onto something there.
I found a lot of innumeracy late in my career (I retired in 2018). As an engineer, I always did a lot of mental math and all good engineers learned how to bound a problem to arrive at a reasonable answer very quickly. You recognized that an answer (no matter how precise) that was out of the bounds of reasonableness had to be wrong.
All of those arts do seem to be gone. We are in the era where kids (later adults) always reflexively reach for the calculator instead of attempting mental math and asking “Is this a reasonable answer?”
That is a very likely explanation for this incredibly stupid error.
And the fact that a number of people looked at it and blessed the answer makes it even worse!”””
You and I are on the same page. Even more scary are those workers who go to Google to look for answers to a question posed to them.
My sister taught middle and high school kids math for 45 years. “Why do I need to learn this? I can just use Google!” was a common refrain at the end of her career.
Of course, back in my day, “Why do I need to learn this? I’ll never use it.” was the common refrain.
Then, years later, it was “Why do I need to do these problems by hand? Why can’t I use my calculator?”
Life Lesson Learned: laziness is an immutable human trait.
I agree with you that we all need to know the basics of math.
Whether I am using a calculator or an Excel spreadsheet, I already have the approximate answer in mind before I enter any numbers.
This is how I check to be sure I have entered the correct numbers into the calculator or Excel.
And using such discernment extends beyond math questions to the massive amount of information that is available to us these days.
“I already have the approximate answer in mind before I enter any numbers.”
That’s the beauty of exponential notation and mental math. Here’s an example: suppose you have a problem: (450,214 * 190) / (1,082,410)
Round the 190 up to 200 and break that down to 2 * 100.
Then the numerator is 2 * 450,000 (rounded down) which is 900,000. Multiply that by the 100 and you have 90 million.
Alternatively, you could round the 190 up to 1,000, multiply that by the 450,000 and get 450 million. Divide that by 5 and you get 90 million.
Then round the denominator down to 1 million.
Rough answer: 90 million divided by 1 million is 90.
Or 4.5 E 5 * 2 E 2 / 1.1 E 6 = (4.5 * 2) E 7 / 1.1 E 6 = (9 / 1.1) E 1 ~ 90
Actual answer is 79.02. But, by doing the quick calc to get 90, you know what ballpark you should be in. This is where the county assessor and all of his or her colleagues failed.
I remember about fifth grade (1963) reading a Popular Science article about “mental math” and being intrigued by it. It stuck with me all my life!
“””I remember about fifth grade (1963) reading a Popular Science article about “mental math” and being intrigued by it. It stuck with me all my life!”””
I am a few years older than you, but I remember when I was about in the fifth grade developing a system to multiply two numbers—such as 36 times 28-—in my head. No longer have that talent!!!
I remember those systems. I can’t do it either any more. My dad taught me how to manually find square roots which was really cool, but that’s gone, too.
I find 36 x 28 approximates 30 x 30 = 900 is good enough, then reach for the calculator (i.e., the phone).
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