School District and Landowner Embroiled In East Texas Land Dispute

KLTV.com | Tracy Watler:

“Henderson ISD has plans to build a new primary school, but they say in order to do so, they need a certain four acres, owned by a city councilman. But that councilman says the school's offer is just not good enough. ... The Rusk County Appraisal District says Ashmore's land is worth just 3,000 dollars an acre. ... 'We definitely feel like, from what we've been told, that $15,000 per acres for these four acres is a fair amount of money to offer for that property,' says [Henderson ISD Superintendent Tommy] Alexander. But Ashmore doesn't think so. That's why he's asking for $150,000.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Let me see if I've got this straight. The councilman has been paying property on land that's appraised at $3000/acre. A buyer offers hims $15,000/acre. He says his land is really worth $37,500/acre.

Knowing nothing more, if I were the arbiter, I would award him the $15,000 and tell him he's lucky the city doesn't take his land for the value he's been happy paying taxes on — $3,000/acre.

Governor Perry's so-called Task Force on Appraisal Reform is beating the drums to strangle the growth of local government. If they took seriously the title of their task force, appraisal reform, they would be doing something to stop abuses like this in Tyler. When landowners like this city councilman are underpaying their property taxes by, what, 10x?, that means those taxes are shifted onto someone else, probably the homeowners in Tyler, who can't hide the true value of their homes as easily as this city councilman has.

The most obvious way to achieve more accurate property appraisals is public sale price disclosure. Only when appraisers can see what properties actually sell for can they accurately set a value.

In cases like this undeveloped land in Tyler, whose situation is unique, perhaps other reforms are necessary. Perhaps landowners should be required to accept the appraised value when their land is taken by eminent domain. If he's been happily underpaying his property taxes, he ought to be happy accepting less than true market value. On the other hand, if the landowner wants government to pay him an outrageous sum for his land, he at least ought to have been paying property taxes on it in like amount. If he hasn't been, he has no right to complain he's being cheated now.