Chattooga County Commissioner Blake Elsberry posted on the county’s social media page on Sunday and commented on the recent property assessments.  Some property owners are facing astronomical increases in property values after the county assessor’s office enlisted the services of an assessment company.  The county paid over $69,000 for the service from Georgia Mass Appraisal Solutions System (GMASS), but there have been reports that the assessments may be skewed in many instances.

Last week, the local newspaper reported that there could have been a “glitch” that caused the assessments to be off.  Then, another report from a local media source said that the CEO of GMASS says that they have not been made aware of any “glitch” in the system.

The conflicting stories have left many local property owners wandering if their property assessments are correct, and just how their values were calculated.  The county commissioner and the county assessors office have said people should appeal their property taxes. Chattooga County Appraiser Nancy Edgeman told the local paper, “If we take 10,000 appeals, then we’ll take 10,000 appeals. I mean that’s the property owners’ right”.  That makes some wonder how the local assessor’s office will be able to handle what could potentially be thousands of tax assessment appeals.

The group, Concerned Citizens of Chattooga County is holding a property tax assessment appeal town hall meeting on Tuesday, July 25th at 7 PM at the Chattooga County Civic Center and will have detailed information on how property owners file those appeals with the assessors office.

You can read the commissioner’s statement from Sunday below:

I’ve had several people reach out with further questions especially regarding GMASS and wanted to share.

The current consent order fine schedule from the state is $5 for every parcel in the county. So the fine would have been around $68,000 based on the total parcels of the county at the time of the consent order.
We should not have to pay that fine because we agreed to the stipulations of the consent order.
That fine could be repeated if the total digest is not brought up to the state regulations. And that fine could increase as the amount of parcels in the county increase.
The state could also pull any state grants from the county until deficiencies in the digest are corrected.
The cost of GMASS was $69,250. GMASS came highly recommended and has done multiple projects across the state. Attached is a map of current and past projects they have done.
If the digest continued to not be in line with the state criteria the state could eventually come in, take over, and do a mandatory reassessment. The fees for that could be substantial.
I was told the last time that happened in Georgia the cost was over $400,000, but I have not been able to confirm that as of yet.
I do not believe the board is incompetent.
If you look at the 5 year history you can see the assessors and the board were working on getting the sales ratios up gradually to the total digest state requirements.
The consent order forced them to expedite their efforts.
The county has invested in their training. Unlike some boards, this one requires both initial and continued certifications. That training takes time. The board itself does not perform the appraisals, staff completes these. Our staff has multiple levels of training and cannot easily be replaced.
***It should be noted that this board is made up of fellow citizens, neighbors, and people you may know, who all saw their assessments increase as well.
It is important that people file their appeals of their assessments so any areas of discrepancies can be found and addressed. Especially if there is an issue with the GMASS portion, the appeals will be how the assessors can find those and address them with GMASS.
Make sure you appeal your assessment, not the millage rate. Appealing the millage rate is not a valid appeal. As previously stated, the millage rate for these assessments has not been set yet.
If there are people who would like to serve on the board in the future when an appointment is available please let me know. I have been hard pressed to find people willing to do it or have the ability to take the time from work it requires for the meetings and training. I have only had two people volunteer to do it since I’ve been in office.
I’ll reiterate that I will be looking to rollback the county’s side of the millage as we have every year during my tenure, but the Tax Commissioner and I are both waiting on accurate numbers from the assessors before she can calculate that rollback rate and then send it to me. I do not set nor have any authority over the millage rate set by the school system.
I have reached out to the state about the possibility of any executive orders that could give local governments the authority to deal with this situation right now, but unfortunately it seems any changes can only be done by legislation.
Should you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to reach out our office.

Thank you!