Assessor

Narrator: There are about 50 public service providers that depend on property taxes in Clark County. Depending on where you live, you might be in a school district, fire district, a city, even a cemetery district.
Narrator: The Clark County Assessor’s Office appraises properties to establish their fair market values, which determine how property taxes are calculated. Following rules and procedures set by Washington State, the Assessor’s Office updates all property valuations and goes out to the field to physically inspect one-sixth of the properties in the county each year.
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Speaker [Peter Van Nortwick, Clark County Assessor]: Well, the reason to have an assessor and to appraise the property is that property taxes are one of the main ways that the counties and the school districts bring in revenues. And so, our system is based upon a budget-based system. The taxing district, such as the school district, has a set budget, uh, which we are going to collect, and we go out and appraise the properties in order to determine who is going to pay what percentage of that budget.

Narrator: To keep a fair and equitable system, appraisers in the Assessor’s Office are looking at a host of variables that go into evaluating property, such as acreage, style, quality of materials, and square footage of buildings. 

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Speaker [Linda McClain, Appraiser, Clark County Assessor’s Office]: We have characteristics that are, uh, printed out from our database on each property in our geographic area we’re assigned, whether it’s a bare lot parcel, where it may just have an outbuilding, or those with mobile homes, houses...
Speaker [Linda McClain, Appraiser, Clark County Assessor’s Office]: …We will go to the property, and depending on the speed of the road, we drive by as slow as possible. We pull up in front of a home, and we check the exterior, uh, siding. We look at the roof type. If there’s anything that looks incorrect, we will pull in and try and measure around the exterior of the home and talk to the homeowners.
Narrator: Another variable for evaluating property is the sale of homes in the area. In the state of Washington, an appraisal date of January 1, 2012, was computed using sales from 2011. Because of this system, assessments reflecting values in 2011 will affect property taxes in 2013.

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Speaker [Peter Van Nortwick, Clark County Assessor]: One of the things that I hear from people is they ask me the question, “How come my property taxes went up by, you know, X amount of dollars when the state limits the increase in property taxes to 1%?” And what that is actually referring to is each of the taxing districts, from year to year, is allowed to increase their budget by 1%, plus new construction.
Speaker [Peter Van Nortwick, Clark County Assessor]: One of the key things that we do in our office is we go out when people do permits, we pick up those permits and make sure we bring in that new construction and add it to the rolls, because that’s very important to the cities. Because that is one of the big drivers of how they can bring more money in is by having new development.
Speaker [Patrick Higbie, Appraiser, Clark County Assessor’s Office]: Well, we’re out here picking up some new construction. This is the, uh, new permit that was issued earlier this year by the City of Vancouver. Um, we’re out here just basically measuring out, uh, the house, making sure the plans match up, uh, and we’re, and we’re fairly, uh, assessing the property based on its square footage.

Speaker [Patrick Higbie, Appraiser, Clark County Assessor’s Office]: Oftentimes, the plans that are submitted by the builder are not exact based on the you know lot dimensions, or just because there are so many permits in some of these subdivisions, they might be crisscrossed. For the future owner of the property, we want to make sure that they’re, you know, not overtaxed, or for that matter, I guess, under-taxed.

Narrator: A helpful tool to find information about individual properties, such as assessment data and building characteristics, is at the Clark County Property Information Center on the county’s website. 

Speaker [Peter Van Nortwick, Clark County Assessor]: You can also go on and find the taxes that you paid, and you can also find out the breakdown of your taxes, what school districts they go to, how much, what other taxing districts, what percentage is going to them… 

Speaker [Peter Van Nortwick, Clark County Assessor]: …If your property taxes go up, you can also look and say, “Where are my property taxes going up?” Is it based upon more going to the school district or more going to the city that you live in?

For more information on the Clark County Assessor’s Office and to check out the Property Information Center tool, go to the county’s website at clark.wa.gov/assessor.