Elected officials say they get phone calls every day from property owners who are angry about several things: unrealistically high appraisals of property, wide disparities in property values for neighboring lots and property tax rates that many taxpayers feel are too high.
Local residents aired their grievances Monday at separate meetings of the Beaufort County Legislative Delegation and County Council.
Kate Tyminski, who owns land in Bluffton near the May River, spoke to both groups, presenting evidence taken from the county assessor's Web site that shows neighboring properties with widely disparate values.
Richardson, R-Hilton Head Island, said he had heard from residents who were planning to take legal action that would seek to throw out this year's entire reassessment.
"I would be surprised if there wasn't a class-action lawsuit against the county," Richardson said. "I don't know how Beaufort County can go forward without redoing the whole thing."
County officials said while they knew residents were furious about the reassessment -- which left some properties with increases of up to 800 percent since the last reassessment in 1998 -- they hadn't heard the threat of a lawsuit.
County Council Chairman Weston Newton was quick to note that the county and school district are both operating under budgets that contain no tax increases except for a small inflation factor. So while tax bills on land and real property may be increasing, the taxes paid on cars, boats and other forms of personal property are decreasing.
But there's another side to the story. County Council members say they routinely get phone calls from constituents who don't have a problem with their property's newly appraised value, but think that the rate at which it is taxed -- known as millage -- should be lower.
"What these people tell me is that they don't disagree with the value placed on their property," said County Councilman Frank Brafman of Hilton Head. "They disagree with the millage rate."
With confusion apparently reigning on the issue, county officials have been trying to explain exactly how property reassessments and tax rates work.
The county finance director has explained the issues repeatedly at County Council meetings. County Administrator Gary Kubic posted a "Message to Taxpayers" on the county Web site trying to explain the matter. But still residents are confused.
Hilton Head Mayor Tom Peeples sent a letter to Newton on Dec. 3 asking for an explanation of why it seems that property tax bills are increasing throughout the island without any corresponding decrease.
Peeples wanted to know how many tax bills increased and decreased by geographic area and divided by land-use type.
Newton and other council members directed Kubic to gather data that will explain where properties have increased in value and where they have decreased along with other ways to more clearly explain how local governments aren't reaping a windfall from the reassessment.
"I've received a number of phone calls from people confused and concerned about the millage rollback of both the county and the towns," Newton said.
Further complicating matters is a bill approved by the state General Assembly in June that Gov. Mark Sanford hasn't acted on. The bill would limit increases in property assessments at 20 percent.
Sanford has about a month to decide whether to sign the bill into law, veto it or take no action, in which case it would become law. If he vetoes it, the state chamber of commerce has threatened to sue to block the law from taking effect.
But Richardson said he expected that if the bill is vetoed, he would push for legislators to come back with a stronger measure that would hold all property appraisals at a constant value until properties are sold.
"If the governor vetoes the assessment cap, I think if we can't (override) the veto, we will go to a system of point-of-sale reassessment," Richardson said. "We have got to do something to fix this."