Class action lawsuit filed over Jackson County assessments

[Hammock Parties]

https://www.kctv5.com/2023/06/25/cla...y-assessments/

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) - A new class action lawsuit challenges the quality of Jackson County’s property assessment. It calls into question if some increases are even legal considering some notices came in the mail after the June 15 deadline, as required by state statutes.

The filing asks a judge to step in and offer injunctive relief. It also calls for a jury trial.

The lawsuit was filed by attorney and developer Ken McClain on behalf of Trevor and Amanda Tilton of Odessa and two businesses.

The lawsuit is critical of the methodology used by Jackson County to reach new values. It argues the newly-built assessment system fails to include sufficient information and there’s a lack of physical inspections.

It points out assessments should consider current market conditions. It argues that didn’t happen when it came to commercial property.

The lawsuit claims Jackson County uniformly increased the value of every non-vacant commercial property with an improvement by 25%. And vacant commercial properties had an across-the-board increase of roughly 50%.

KCTV5 has heard from numerous homeowners who are shocked by the large increases in their assessments. Some question if they’ll be able to keep their homes. They also question if they can realistically sell when property tax assessments increase so much in one fell swoop.

READ MORE: Jackson County property assessment workshops kick off
There has been a 30% average increase in Jackson County. The Assessor’s Office argues homeowners are seeing large increases because Jackson County real estate has not been assessed with Fair Market Valuations (FMV) for a long time and building costs have increased.

The lawsuit is filed against Jackson County Executive Frank White, Assessor Gail McCann Beatty and other members of the Board of Equalization.

KCTV5 reached out to Jackson County’s public information officer for comment but we have not heard back yet.

Politicans exempt from insane take hikes



Legislation drawn to overturn insane tax hikes:



Protest scheduled at Jackson County Courthouse:



KC Town Hall scheduled July 15

[Hammock Parties]

Jackson County withholding $6M from Tyler Technologies pending improvements in assessment process

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Many homeowners have complained about the Jackson County property tax assessment process this year.

Now, the KSHB 41 I-Team found out that the county is withholding money to make sure the company doing the assessments meets its requirements.

Troy Schulte, Jackson County Administrator, confirmed to I-Team reporter Sarah Plake that the county is withholding $6 million from Tyler Technologies' contract, the firm hired the generate the property values.

Tyler Tech was granted an $18 million contract in total.

Schulte said Tyler Tech has had several issues this year, including its phone system not working properly.

KSHB 41 News has heard from homeowners who can't get through to anyone when they call to appeal, or they're disconnected while on hold.

This happened to Frank Hanis.

"I was number 31 in line. I waited a long time," Hanis said. "I was number two in line and that's when they hung up."

Schulte said Tyler Tech was supposed to turn in the property value data to the county by October 2022, but the county didn't receive the data until four months later in February.

The deadline to appeal property assessments was extended to July 31.

[Eureka]

Ask way to high and make it seem like your giving the residents a deal by lowering the tax percentage. Bold strategy.

[Hammock Parties]

The Assessment Department has admitted to 39,000 appeals with settling 7,000 so far. I believe that number is higher, since on Friday, July 14, they admitted to 38,000 appeals.

I don't think only a 1,000 people have filed during the last week, when they were filing at 1,000 per day before that.

But here is the real math: If the BOE hears each appeal at only 5 minutes each, or 12 per hour, for 8 hours every day, the most number of appeals they could hear would be about 100. Multiply that by 5 days a week, to get to 500 a week, and 4 weeks a month, for 2,000 total a month.

Even if there are only 30,000 total appeals when the deadline comes on July 31, that will take 15 months to get through every day, all day.

It is physically and financially impossible, because the three Frank White appointed BOE members have an annual contract of about $35,000. They are going to have to be asking the Legislature to give them more money to get through all these appeals.

What if the Legislature says no? The Legislature has already stopped payment on a $5M check to Tyler Technologies, I believe. This train wreck is completely on Frank White and Gail McCann Beatty, who both should be charged with gross mismanagement of public resources.

There is no other county in the country that is undergoing this kind of tax assessment mess. I thought 2019 was bad enough; it is worse now.

[Inspector]

Originally Posted by Inspector

Got mine reduced...some. Still overvalued but not as bad.

Wish we could get the SB190 provisions in effect here. That would be helpful.

Wow.

I fell for it. Told me it was reduced but it never was. No documentation, no reduction. Apparently the whole zoom meeting deal was a scam.

Now, I'm not allowed to make another attempt. That $80k reduction was just lip service. I guess they figured we wouldn't discover the con job until we got the tax bill and they were snugly back home in Texas.

I give up. They win. I suppose that was the intent all along.

[gblowfish]

Originally Posted by Inspector

Wow.

I fell for it. Told me it was reduced but it never was. No documentation, no reduction. Apparently the whole zoom meeting deal was a scam.

Now, I'm not allowed to make another attempt. That $80k reduction was just lip service. I guess they figured we wouldn't discover the con job until we got the tax bill and they were snugly back home in Texas.

I give up. They win. I suppose that was the intent all along.

They should have generated some kind of confirming paperwork of the reduction. Check with them and have them send a PDF. Did you record the Zoom Call?

[gblowfish]

I can tell you as a lifelong resident of Jackson County, this shit won't stand. Every single resident I know is pissed off about it, and there will be consequences for Frank White and minions.

[Hammock Parties]

Originally Posted by Inspector

Wow.

I fell for it. Told me it was reduced but it never was. No documentation, no reduction. Apparently the whole zoom meeting deal was a scam.

Now, I'm not allowed to make another attempt. That $80k reduction was just lip service. I guess they figured we wouldn't discover the con job until we got the tax bill and they were snugly back home in Texas.

I give up. They win. I suppose that was the intent all along.

The legislature is going to take care of this. No money = can't conduct appeals.

JaCo has an unsolvable problem on their hands. They're going to be forced into a blanket reduction or face riots.

[Hammock Parties]

Originally Posted by gblowfish

I can tell you as a lifelong resident of Jackson County, this shit won't stand. Every single resident I know is pissed off about it, and there will be consequences for Frank White and minions.

It's going to be the renters too. When you have bipartisan support for checking local government overreach, things happen.

Eventually they are going to have to come to terms with the fact that Tyler isn't going to finish the job, and then it falls to the County to do SOMETHING.

https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news...ssment-process

Jackson County legislators discuss holding Tyler Technologies accountable

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — All week, and really all summer, Jackson County legislators have talked about how to improve this year's property assessment process.

"We should've been able to figure this out as soon as we got past 2019, when the legislature invested the $18 million," Jalen Anderson, 1st district at-large legislator said, referring to the assessment mess that happened in 2019.

They take issue with Tyler Technologies, the company the county contracted to generate the property values, which the county awarded an $18 million dollar contract.

At the county legislature meeting Monday, legislators talked about withholding money from Tyler's contract because of issues in the process, which KSHB 41 News has reported on for weeks.

"Is it true that we still have about three and a half million bucks withheld from Tyler?" Manny Abarca, 1st district legislator, asked County Administrator Troy Schulte.

Schulte responded, "Yeah, I think it's more than that."

However, Mod Op, the company the county is paying $90,000 to handle assessment communications, takes issue with county officials and legislators using the term "withhold."

Mod Op told KSHB 41 Tyler has not billed the county yet for the $6 million remaining on the contract, so the county hasn't issued any money.

"I think that was their concern that we're 'withholding' it," Schulte told KSHB 41 on Thursday. "I think the number we're actually withholding is about $4 million, but they haven't billed us through, so a total of $6 million."

Schulte said the county has daily conversations with Tyler to make sure they meet their requirements, of which they've fallen short so far, resulting in mass confusion for homeowners.

Schulte added that Tyler Technologies is not in breach of its contract.

It's a deliverable-based contract, so Schulte says when Tyler completes a project, then they get paid.

"We have paid them for completion of the software. We have not paid them for the completion of the parcel-by-parcel review or the appeals process, which is their contract," Schulte said. "So those are the processes where we continue to work, negotiate with Tyler, to make sure we get the results we need."

The parcel-by-parcel review and the appeals process is where Schulte says Tyler has fallen short.

Tyler turned the parcel data into the county four months late, causing a time crunch.

"It's that compression issue of trying to do it within a 30 to 60 day process, as opposed to what our original intention had been, to be a four to five month process," Schulte said at the legislature meeting.

Tyler's phone system was not working properly, leaving homeowners hanging while trying to schedule appeal hearings.

Schulte said Tyler's phone system was set up on eastern time, not central. They didn't have enough staffing.

People would be on hold for a long time and when they were next, the line would hang up. There wasn't an option to leave a voicemail. When homeowners had appeals hearings set up on a Zoom call, no one with Tyler would show up.

Jackson County Legislature Chairman Daron McGee said constituents told him they took off work to be on the Zoom call only to have no one show up.

Schulte told legislators that Tyler had scheduled too many Zooms in one hour, thinking they'd only take five to 10 minutes. In reality, the calls required much more time than that, leading to delays.

"My conversations with Tyler was, 'Answer the G-D phones, that's what we're paying you for.' That was the recurring issue.," Schulte said.

The phone issues got so bad that the county had to take over that portion on July 10.

The legislators talked about that at-length at their last meeting.

"We had the Tyler Technologies representative here. They told us everything was great and clearly things are not as well as they expounded to us three weeks ago," McGee said. "Clearly that was bull. I mean, that doesn't even make sense with all issues we're having. It's countywide. It makes us look bad that we've contracted to a company that clearly has done a bad job. We should have never [hung up] on taxpayers."

Abarca asked several times during the meeting when the county will acknowledge the assessment process was a failure.

"Where does the buck stop?" Abarca asked.

Legislators are expected to discuss a resolution at their next meeting to further ensure Tyler Technologies meets its requirements. Sean Smith, 6th district legislator, brought up the idea.

Schulte responded to the resolution idea, saying, "I don't think that would hurt."

[neech]

Originally Posted by Inspector

Wow.

I fell for it. Told me it was reduced but it never was. No documentation, no reduction. Apparently the whole zoom meeting deal was a scam.

Now, I'm not allowed to make another attempt. That $80k reduction was just lip service. I guess they figured we wouldn't discover the con job until we got the tax bill and they were snugly back home in Texas.

I give up. They win. I suppose that was the intent all along.

That sucks man. But you can still be vocal about it and vote them out of office as well.

Don't be quiet about it though then they really win.

[Inspector]

Originally Posted by gblowfish

They should have generated some kind of confirming paperwork of the reduction. Check with them and have them send a PDF. Did you record the Zoom Call?

We asked for documentation during our call and was told, "It's been taken care of." Since we were somewhat satisfied with the agreement, we accepted him at his word. Ooops!

I've tried to contact them but my attempts have not been successful. Waiting to see if they respond to my email.

And no, we didn't record it. Yep, dumb old people we are. Gullible to think anyone else has integrity.

[gblowfish]

Originally Posted by Inspector

We asked for documentation during our call and was told, "It's been taken care of." Since we were somewhat satisfied with the agreement, we accepted him at his word. Ooops!

I've tried to contact them but my attempts have not been successful. Waiting to see if they respond to my email.

And no, we didn't record it. Yep, dumb old people we are. Gullible to think anyone else has integrity.

Threaten to sue them if they don't provide the proper and accurate documentation.

[Inspector]

Originally Posted by neech

That sucks man. But you can still be vocal about it and vote them out of office as well.

Don't be quiet about it though then they really win.

Thanks man. I'll definitely will be thinking about this during their next election. I've also posted about this on the Nextdoor application too.

I'm assuming I'm not alone and others have fallen for their con.

[Inspector]

Originally Posted by gblowfish

Threaten to sue them if they don't provide the proper and accurate documentation.

Not ruling that out. A lot of them are connected so have to be careful who we choose.

[penguinz]

If you voted for Frank White you deserve this. Dumbasses would probably still vote for him if he runs again.

[Hammock Parties]

clown show

Well, I received my documentation from my Sunshine Act request. I'll have to look up the 5 comps they listed but had to laugh at their picture used for my property.

Just 30' back up the road would have been a nice picture of my home, but they chose this instead. They gave my house a B- grade from viewing it from 300' away. I personally wouldn't hire an appraiser to determine my classic car's value by taking a picture of just the door handle from 20' away but that is what I equate this hilarious attempt to.

I was home on the date the picture was taken (8 2 2021) as I am most days. No attempt was made to contact me. None of us would have a job if we were this totally inept at our jobs. Pretty sad situation really. I hope everyone dealing with this gets the resolution they expect.