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| Tax Collector's Tech Group |
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| Speaking is Sandi King, DOR liaison and meeting facilitator |
by Sandi King, program analyst, PTD
Oregon's tax collectors, in partnership with the Department of Revenue, have established a Tax Collector's Tech Group. The first tech meeting took place in Salem on December 5, 2007. The tech group has now met three times with 12-16 counties represented at each meeting. The group has decided to meet three times a year—at the winter and summer conferences and in late April or early May.
(Editor's Note: The photo is of Sandi King addressing the initial tech group meeting, December 5, 2007. "We are off to a great start," says Sandi. "They are a great group, full of energy and a lot of laughs—well okay, they do a lot of hard work and the laughs simply keep the work enjoyable.")
The tech group discusses current issues, develops proposed training, and addresses hot topics as they arise. The group plans to share ideas and similar experiences, as well as develop and receive training. Most decisions will be made by the Tax Collector's tech group. However, all major decisions will be by a vote, with one vote per county. Materials presented at the tech meetings will be available for anyone who wasn't able to attend.
Many individuals in the tax collection area are nearing retirement. The tax collectors want to draw on those individuals' experiences and knowledge by developing training tools that can be saved on a CD or some other medium and shared with current and future new staff.
One of the primary training tools is, and will be, the Tax Collection Manual, which has been in revision. The chapters are being revised four and five at a time, and then presented at conference. The group wants this to continue, with a more in-depth discussion about how individual counties manage different aspects of each chapter, as it's reviewed.
In addition to the full tech group, additional committees have been established.
The Education Committee began in December 2007 and is responsible for developing training ideas, assigning those individuals (or volunteers) best suited to present the training, processing training requests to add to the training list, and developing ideas for the "Tax Talk" session at the winter and summer conferences. Contact the Education Committee to add specific training to the list.
The current members are:
Mike Engberg–Chair, Danni Urbatzka–Co-chair, Theresa Spradling, Mike Long, Sharon Roosa, Jayne Welch, Lee Peterson, and Gordon Tiemeyer, with special assistance from Gary Hubbard in developing the mission and scope.
The Warrants Committee, which has developed an outline for the warrants process, and Diane Belt from Washington County will present the Warrants training at summer conference, which will cover the process and required procedures that need to be followed.
Committee members are:
Mike Engberg–Chair, Danni Urbatzka–Co-chair, Diane Belt, Eve Arce, Linda Pilson, Theresa Spradling, and Sandi King.
The Legislative Committee held its first meeting on June 12 in Eugene. There are five volunteers for the committee, and if anyone else would like the opportunity to learn about the legislative process and improve our current statutes, please let me know. There are several statutes that will be reviewed at the tech meeting on August 6 (Summer Conference). The tech group will prioritize the list and determine which changes will go forward during the 2009 legislative session.
Committee members are:
Sharon Roosa, Krista Kerins, Danni Urbatzka, Izzy Brock, Gary Bartholomew, and facilitators Sandi King and Greg Kramer.
The "Notices" Training Committee will cover all types of notices, mostly those surrounding delinquent property tax issues. Sharon and Krista will put together a training presentation for the 2009 Winter Conference in January.
Committee members are:
Sharon Roosa, Krista Kerins
All committee meetings, except for the first Legislative Committee meeting on June 12, have been telephone conference calls, allowing any county to participate without worrying about time and distance.
For those who have not been able to attend a tech group meeting, think about where you might like the Spring 2009 meeting to be held. That location will be decided at Summer Conference. If you cannot attend, e-mail your suggestions to: sandi.l.king@state.or.us.
To be continued...
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| OSACA and OACTC 2008 Joint Summer Conference |
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by Al Gaines, Eugene Field Team, and Christie Wilson, Timber
On August 5 and 6, the 2008 Oregon State Association of County Assessors (OSACA) and Oregon Association of County Tax Collectors (OACTC) joint conference is being held at The Resort at the Mountain in Welches, Oregon, just west of Mt. Hood. Early registration and networking is available on August 4 in the late afternoon/early evening, and the specialized management training seminar Breakthrough Conflict is scheduled for Thursday, August 8.
The conference program agenda is offered to exchange information and provide continuing education to benefit Oregon's county assessors, tax collectors, revenue department managers, and their related senior staff members. Anette Spickard, Lane County assessor and OSACA's first vice-president, was responsible for organizing the program.
On the opening morning we'll hear from the Oregon Department of Revenue and from a keynote speaker on the Economics of Green Building. At the end of the day will be a Candidates Forum—candidates for Secretary of State, Congressional District 5, and U.S. Senate have been invited to mix and mingle with the conference attendees.
There are also three tracks for special interest break-out sessions. On August 5, the sessions include Economic Forecast and History of Tax Foreclosure, as well as meetings for OSACA business, chief appraiser roundtable, and data exchange groups.
On Wednesday, August 6, the special interest sessions continue. The tax collectors have six one-hour sessions planned: Tax Manual Updates, Tech Group*: Warrant Process Training, Succession Planning, Tax Talk, Legislative Work Session, and Tax Collectors' Business Meeting. (*See the accompanying article, Tax Collector's Tech Group: 'As of July 2008', for related background information.)
The assessors and chief appraisers will have independent sessions Wednesday morning and then join for three sessions in the afternoon. While the assessors carry on with more business meetings, the chief appraisers will hear technical presentations on property damage assessment and meth labs. Steve Harris, appraisal division manager, Washington County, has coordinated these sessions with some help from Revenue's Assessment and Taxation Standard's staff.
The first session, addressing disaster preparedness, assessments, and recovery, will feature speakers from the Oregon Military Department's Emergency Management Section, Washington County's Office of Consolidated Emergency Management, and Revenue's ATS section.
The second session will employ the skills and knowledge of the Oregon State Police to provide insight into prevention and intervention when encountering any toxic or dangerous environments and, specifically, to identify, safely discover, respond, report, and follow through when field appraising real and personal property affected by methamphetamine labs.
The afternoon's joint assessor/chief appraiser sessions are Alternate Energy Panel Discussion, Mold and Construction Defects, and Green Building Construction Technology. Anette says, "I've attended these sessions already and I thought they were so good for the work that we do, that I wanted to share them with our conference attendees."
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| My Thoughts |
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by Jim Bucholz, PTD Administrator
What do you think of when you think of spring? For some, it's yard work and flowers. For me, it's baseball and hay fever. But for a large part of the Property Tax Division, late spring means intense, deadline-driven work.
Late spring is one of the busiest times of the year for the staff in PTD. We have several workload spikes in each of our sections that occur every year at this time and, for the staff involved, each of these signal an extremely focused period of work in their respective units. For this article, I'd like to shine the spotlight on the Valuation Section—specifically the Industrial Property Return (IPR) processing and utility valuation seasons.
The Valuation Section is responsible for IPR processing. IPR processing is the work that the section goes through to annually establish the real market values of all industrial properties in the state that have an improvement value of more than $1 million. In the 1980s, we had 10 appraisers and 460 accounts. Today we have 27 appraisers who, along with a support staff, are responsible for valuing more than 3,200 accounts. You don't need to be a math major to get a sense for how the work has grown through the years. In addition to the workload, the complexity of the valuation process has also increased due to factors such as emerging global competition and the need to stay on top of increasing volatility in industry economics. The task is daunting to say the least! I am proud of our industrial valuation staff. As is the case with all of government, there is always more good work to do than there are resources to do it. Despite the challenges, the passion and dedication of the industrial valuation staff for the work that they do and the counties that they serve is unsurpassed by any other work unit I have come across.
Not to be outdone by their industrial valuation counterparts, the utility team is also under the gun during the late spring. Our 7-person utility team is responsible for annually establishing real market values of the 575 utility and transportation companies statewide. Typically, the properties that this team values are bought, sold, or traded as "units" rather than trading individual assets like other companies do. This means that the most accurate way of valuing their assets involves a complete valuation of the entire company—sometimes even nationwide—and then using a method of apportionment to determine the appropriate values attributable to each district. The utility staff needs a high level of sophistication and expertise to pull this off. Needless to say, this takes a lot of midnight oil if they are going to accomplish their task by mid-June as required by statute. Of course, they always do. I admit that I have a soft spot in my heart for the utility team; it's where I got my start in property tax 15 years ago.
On a different note, I didn't want to let this season pass without thanking the Assessment and Taxation Standards section for coordinating another successful CAFFA grant review season. For several reasons, this year proved to be particularly challenging. Mark Kinslow and I got the opportunity to travel to several counties to meet with boards of commissioners to help them work through the difficult budget choices they are facing. Once again though, the work of the reviewers was top notch, and that made our job a whole lot easier. Kudos to the grant reviewers from both Mark and me for a job well done. Now it's on to summer and a whole new set of challenges!
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| Feature Focus |
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by Vera Carriger, Valuation Section manager
Vera's career path is an excellent example of the diverse opportunities available to our loyal DOR employees.
I graduated from Portland State University in August 1986. At one point I thought I was headed back East to work for one of the Big 8 accounting firms and become a partner. After interviewing with a few of them, I decided that wasn't for me. I was too much of a family person and I was a little nervous about their general values around family and children. I had been working for a few months at Standard Insurance Company as an accountant (which I did really enjoy) when my mother saw an advertisement for a tax auditor. I didn't think I wanted to do that either and it didn't sound nearly as prestigious to me as a partner in an accounting firm. But she was right that it could allow me the flexibility I need to maintain my values and not compromise my family priorities. I'm a bit of a type A personality and really do enjoy working and being involved. So, I applied and began working for Revenue in the January 1987 audit class.
Within a few months after finishing audit class, I became the filing enforcement coordinator. The Legislature had passed Tax Equity and boosted our filing enforcement program, which before than had been nearly nonexistent (or at least not structured). That was hard! But, I was young and thought I was "all that," so I took it on. I was responsible for training 18 new administrative assistants (aka specialists). We also didn't use computers back then much (four people shared a terminal and it wasn't very useful) but Jim Manary wanted reports of how we were doing! I spent a lot of time traipsing back and forth to computer people, trying to figure out how we could do something—anything—electronic. I remember being shocked coming right out of college (having started as a computer science minor; PSU didn't require a minor program) that we were using carbon forms to do our audit reports.
I survived, but soon was headed to the field to conduct field audits. After less than two years conducting field audits and being turned down three times for a permanent position in the field, I reluctantly agreed to move to the Personal Income Tax policy unit. I remember Randy Evers telling me that it would probably be the best move of my career, and I think he was right. How'd he know?! I spent four years in the policy unit working on legislation and admin rules, giving speeches on new tax law to various groups, editing forms and publications, and answering governor/director letters. I loved working there; I love tax policy and the challenge of either interpreting statutes or determining the best solution for both administration and taxpayers.
After that I moved to Corporation and conducted corporate excise tax audits. It was during this time that I moved over to Computer Services to help with completion of CATS (Corporation Automated Tax System)—I think because I have an interest in automation (anything to get us away from carbon forms, for goodness sake) and we were working on a project to automate the processing of corporate returns, I spent four years on project teams to help design and test systems.
I then went back to Corp and, for the next six or seven years, I worked in or managed the corporation policy unit (the counterpart to the PIT policy unit). I loved this job, too. Corporation tax policy was also challenging in many different ways. I thought I would stay there until I retired. But, oh no! I heard about an opening in Property Tax and thought, "I haven't done that yet." I think I have been exposed to nearly every other place in the department and I truly love working here. So, I wanted to give Property Tax a try. I competed for the position and began in a developmental. At first I thought it was the easiest job I had ever had, but I was all too young (in the job), making assumptions. It did offer a whole new set of challenges and learning opportunities for me, so I applied for a permanent position when that came open. They offered me the job, which I was honored to accept, and I plan to stay for a long while.
I love working for Revenue. The people I have met throughout the years are passionate about doing a good job and "the right thing," the ethics and values that the department holds are of a high standard, which I so appreciate, and I have been given plenty of flexibility to do quality work for Oregon's citizens and taxpayers, all the while raising two wonderful children.
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| Property Tax Certification: A partnership |
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by Gordon Tiemeyer, ATS
Certification time is here. It's a busy time for the property tax system as we reach the end of the fiscal year. More than 1,200 taxing districts throughout the state have completed or are putting the finishing touches on their budgets for the upcoming 2008-2009 fiscal year.
So what happens during certification?
It starts with the taxing districts, which have authority by statute or the constitution to levy a property tax: cities, counties, health districts, rural fire protection districts, cemetery districts, etc. They must prepare their budgets by July 1, then certify their property tax levies to the county assessor by July 15.
PTD offers a wide variety of services and support to the districts. The department provides:
- education and assistance to ensure districts follow the proper procedures for preparing their budgets and stay within the law; and
- assistance preparing maps to show all properties within the districts' borders to ensure that everyone receiving services are paying their share.
The assessor's office provides up-to-date data on assessed values of property in the district, as well as other information, including new exemption property or Enterprise zones where property taxes may be exempted for 3-5 years. Overall, they provide good information and great assistance to help the districts provide the best service possible to their citizens. Eventually, the assessor's office completes all the calculations needed to place all the levies requested by the districts on the tax roll and ready to be collected.
The tax collector then helps the districts by collecting taxes. The department provides all property tax statements to all counties' tax collectors. About 2.3 million statements are provided to the counties.
Once the tax collector has sent out the tax statements and the money starts coming in, the county treasurer starts doling out the dollars, using the Tax Distribution Schedule. This unique schedule ensures that each taxing districts receives a proportionate share of the tax money coming into the county, even if the tax collections in their particular district are not going well.
The taxing districts then begin using the tax money to provide their budgeted services. The budget is primarily an estimate and changes will have to be made. The department assists the taxing districts in working their budgets and responding when changes happen.
Although there have been changes here and there, it has been a great partnership and has worked well for 150 years.
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| Court Case Corner |
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by Doug Adair, Assistant Attorney General
Simmons v. Dept. of Revenue and Polk Co., TC 4793
Taxpayers contested the county's denial of farm use special assessment for non-EFU land containing a prune drying facility. The county conceded that prune processing was an accepted farming practice, but argued that the cited examples in ORS 308A.056(3)(f) required that such a processing facility must be situated on EFU land to qualify the land for special assessment status. The court held that those examples were illustrative of the general statutory principle that such processing must be "supporting accepted farming practices" but did not serve to limit special assessment solely to EFU zoned land.
Flores v. Jackson Co., TC-MD 070658C
Taxpayer, a 96-year-old disabled veteran, appealed the county's denial of a veteran's partial exemption under ORS 307.250. Taxpayer is in poor health and has resided at his daughter's home for at least the past three years rather than at his own residence for which partial exemption was sought. The court held that ORS 307.250's reference to partial exemption for a "homestead" required that the otherwise qualified veteran actually reside at the veteran's residence for entitlement to the partial exemption.
Toyota Motor Sales, USA v. Multnomah Co., TC-MD 060583C
At issue was whether certain real property improvements on leased land at the Port of Portland were owned by the Port and thus eligible for exemption and payment in lieu of taxes. Toyota had financed and constructed several large buildings to house a body shop, accessory warehousing and installation functions, a service facility, and administrative offices. The court found that the terms of the lease between Toyota and the Port supported the conclusion that Toyota owned these leasehold improvements at least through the term of the lease. Consequently, because the property was not owned by the Port, it was not eligible for exempt status.
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| County Courthouse |
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Baker County Courthouse
Baker City, OR
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| Comings and Goings |
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by Mary Kintner, PTD administration
Promotions and Transfers
Bruce Tindall, ATS/Program Services
Gene Rhoades, ATS/Salem Field
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| Grapevine |
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Grapevine is published by the Oregon Department of Revenue, Property Tax Division.
Editorial Board: Al Gaines; Mary Kintner; Phil McClellan; Robert Motley; Gordon Tiemeyer; Christie Wilson, Lead; and Gary Wright.
To be added to the Grapevine mailing list or to submit articles, e-mail Grapevine, or contact us by mail at:
Oregon Department of Revenue
Property Tax Division
955 Center Street NE
Salem OR 97301-2555
Phone: 503-945-8292
Fax: 503-945-8737
TTY: 503-945-8617
In compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), this information is available in alternative formats upon request by calling 503-378-4988.
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