Houghton Co. addresses tax error

The issue of an alleged tax assessment error from 2009 continues to haunt the Houghton County Board of Commissioners.

At their monthly meeting last night, Schoolcraft Township resident Sam Buschell, as he has done for the last several meetings, appeared before the board to state his argument that county residents are continuing to be overtaxed based upon incorrectly assessed property values.

Buschell asserts “The dollar value was added to the state equalized value so unless it is taken back out of that state equalized value, every time a home is sold or anything else, it costs money…$392,000 per one percent and over forty percent of the report was wrong.”

Commissioner Dennis Barrette explained that the tax assessment study conducted in 2009 was approved by the required entities and the opportunity has passed to make changes to it.

Barrette emphasized that even if there was a mistake made, new assessments are made each year that are not based upon the previous year’s figures.

“Each assessor every year has top wipe each taxpayers slate clean. They have to erase whatever happened and start a new year and reassess the property. That is a new assessment must be made for every property every year that is not affected by the previous year’s sales study,” said Barrette.

Houghton County publishes their yearly Equalization Reports on their website for public review.