Lake County's tax officials are preparing to re-evaluate property values in an environment where process is a cat-and-mouse game and economically stressed homeowners could be eaten.
The century-old four flat in the 3900 block of Pulaski Street in East Chicago's Indiana Harbor has served as a home for Lorraine Sliger's grandparents, parents and now her.
Sliger said her property is somewhere between severely outdated and uninhabitable.
"I have to go outside to get into my basement," she said. "The electrical wiring is at least 30 years old. The plumbing is original and so rusted I'm afraid to touch it. A little bungalow in the back is falling down around us."
However, the Lake County Assessor's office doesn't think Sliger's place is such a dump. It values it at $80,700, so she pays more than $4,000 in property taxes a year.
"I had a bankruptcy because of medical bills, and I was told if I didn't pay my taxes soon, they would auction off my house," Sliger said last week. She said she scraped together enough cash to get her home off the tax sale, but finding local officials to correct her assessment isn't as easy.
Sliger appealed to the North Township Assessors' office earlier, but "nothing went down," she said.
"They claimed they came to look, but they never knocked on our door. They said it's probably so high, because we are lakefront property."
Lake Michigan is nearly a mile away and on the other side of an ArcelorMittal steel mill.
North Township, blamed for numerous errors, including a $1.2 billion value it attached to a vacant lot in East Chicago two years ago, was voted out of existence last fall by residents.
The Lake County Assessor's office has taken over its responsibilities. Sharon Stone, second deputy in the county assessor's office, said she has no record of Sliger's appeal but will investigate and correct any mistakes made.
David Wickland, president of the Lake County Property Tax Board of Appeals, said a surge in appeal filings may force extra board meetings. This comes as the county begins the first general reassessment since one in 2002 resulted in dramatically higher taxes for tens of thousands of homeowners.
St. John Township Assessor Hank Adams is seeing more frivolous appeals by professional tax consultants. He called about half of the 750 appeals his office is working as worthless as junk mail.
"They don't check to see which ones are legit. We reject them and then they photocopy it and send it in again next year. We have to treat it like a new appeal. We spend so many hours straightening them out, we have trouble getting to the legitimate ones," he said.
George Uzelac, a tax consultant with offices in Valparaiso and Indianapolis, said, "We don't file an appeal unless we have done a proper evaluation. We are swamped with work, too. I think a lot of it has to do with the economy. More corporations are looking at reducing their tax costs."
Jay Goldman, a Merrillville property tax consultant, said the reason for so many appeals is "People are upset, because their taxes are going up 35 and 40 percent in a year. Porter County is in a total uproar. I live in Valparaiso and market values actually decreased, but tax bills went up. It hardly makes sense," Goldman said.
