Thursday, October 18th, the Gilmer County Board of Tax Assessors was pleased to announce the welcoming of Mitchell Morgan as a member of its local board. Morgan, who has over 40 years of banking experience including several years as the former Chairman of United Community Bank, was nominated to fill a vacant spot on the board by the Gilmer County Commissioner’s at last week’s regular Board of Commissioner meeting.Morgan will fill the spot of current board member Randy Bell. Bell will leave the board in January to fulfill hi Post 1 Commissioner duties. Morgan’s term is a six year voluntary term.

After being welcomed by the board on Monday, Morgan explained said he looks forward to serving in the position, and had known many of the other board members for some time.

“I’ve lived here all my life, and I just retired after about 40 years of banking. I just felt like this was some of my area of expertise. They kind of talked me into it, and I said yes!”

Morgan said when asked what he can bring to the assessors’ board to benefit the community.

Since Morgan will take the spot of Bell in January, the BOC will also have to nominate one more member to fill a vacancy left by Jeff Williams. In August, the board announced Williams would resign as a member of the Gilmer County Board of Tax Assessors due to health issues. According to BOA Chairman Tom Porter, the BOC will decide on who will fill Williams’ position at its next meeting.

Thursday night, the BOA also discussed changes to the county’s real property list. According to Chief Tax Appraiser Richard Lamb, any appeals processed since the BOA froze the tax digest in July after the 45 day allowed appeal period following May 18th’s release, have now been resolved. Lamb further explained that once the digest is submitted, any changes that are made have to be done by what is called an error and release or ACO (Account Corrections). With roughly 1200 Appeals and ACOS this year, Lamb concluded that the reason the county had so many appeals this year was because the digest was delayed in going to the revenue department and the Tax Commission had received an extension to process the digest. Lastly, Lamb said now the board must notify the Tax Commission that anything that has been resolved can now be billed at 100 percent, instead of 85 percent, the amount that property values are billed at while under appeal.

After the meeting, Lamb told FYN that he was pleased with the outcome of the amount of appeals considering the county had only 1200 appeals compared to a total of 34,000 assessments.

“We are trying to do our jobs and keep up with the market values,”

Lamb said.

Lamb went on to explain that although these cases had been resolved, the County still has 281 unresolved cases that will be have to be looked at by the Clerk of Superior Court and settled by the Board of Equalization (BOE) members. On September 27th, the local board of assessors previously held a courtesy meeting that forwarded all of these cases to the BOE so they could begin planning the hearings for the cases as all the cases must be heard separately.

However, while these cases have yet to be resolved, changes made to the assessment list on Thursday are now final. Also, as a result based on professional appraisals on properties showing a decrease in property values because of market values, losses from tax collection seem evident for the County.

Community and Southern Bank subdivision listings dropping from $59,400 to $10,000 and one main parcel from Pilgrim’s Pride dropping from 7.6 million to 6 million were some of the key properties on the assessment list showing change.

The reason for this, Lamb explained, was because of depreciation values to the property owned by Pilgrim’s Pride and a lack of sales in the real estate market due to a struggling economy for properties now owned by CSB. Since the start of the global recession in 2007, many companies and businesses not just in Gilmer County, but all over the world, have been hit hard by the economic downfall of the real estate market.

“I would like to see things start selling again,”

Lamb said.