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By DAPHNE HUTCHINSON
Kappnhannock Staff U rilcr
“This county has had the distinction of having the lowest assessments in the state of Virginia...It was done with premeditation—you knew it. I knew it. everybody knew it,” Fred Forberg. director of the property tax division of the State Department of Taxation, recently told Rappahannock’s supervisors and Board Equalization.
According to Forberg, the county’s practice of assessing land at far below its worth is the center of the storm of controversy which has raged ' around implementation of fair market value appraisals, a controversy that triggered last month's special meeting of the Board of Supervisors and Board of Equalization.
“You’re going from one world to another world," said Forberg of the switch from old fractionalized assessments to fair market value. “Nobody else has had to go through that spectrum from alpha to omega...The real problem is that (the new assessments) are so much higher than they were before."
"So mucher higher” is an understated description of the 1.600 percent rise in total property values assess which soared from $12,700 in 1981 u $207,813,670 (minus land use loss) in 1982.
The 1981 figure reflects an assessment on what is estimated at 60 percent of fair market worth further discounted to 15 percent of that total. The 1982 figure is based on what is supposed to be 100 percent of market value, although Forberg said the actual numbers are closer to 78 percent, according to preliminary sales comparisons.
Rappahannock's reassessment at fair market value was done by Jerry Hall, an appraiser with the State Department of Taxation who spent from April, 1980, to February, 1981, here putting new dollar values on land and buildings and then returned periodically to update his work before signing out on the land book last November.
Marked By Controversy
Since the start of this year, the local Board of Equalization, appointed by the circuit court, has been meeting to review and and equalize Hall's figures. From the outset, the efforts of the members — Herbert Barksdale, Thomas Williams, Eileen Day, Ed Bailey and Raymond Johnson—have provoked complaints, threats of legal action, challenges to the board's authority and charges of impropriety.
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