The Fulshear City Council has officially gone on record supporting a local tax protest group in demanding the Fort Bend Central Appraisal District reconsider skyrocketing property valuations in the Fulshear area.
During Tuesday night’s meeting, city council unanimously approved a resolution opposing the valuations, calling them “unrealistic” and “excessive.”
The resolution asked the appraisal district to reconsider the methodology used to establish the property values, which do not reflect fair market value.
“This is a resolution to alert the appraisal district that, speaking as a city, we’re not satisfied with their methodology for assessing values,” City Attorney David Frishman said.
He pointed out that while the city sets the tax rate in Fulshear, it is the appraisal district that determines the property values upon which taxes are collected.
The resolution, Frishman told the council, requests the district change and re-calculate property values, be more responsible to concerns voiced by residents and taxpayers and extend the period during which tax protests can be heard.
“They have over valued property. What’s happening out here is wrong and we want them to review these valuations,” Frishman said.
Council members unanimously approved the resolution, which will now be forwarded to the appraisal district.
Mayor Jamie Roberts said he had already sent a letter to the district expressing his personal opinion, but held out little hope the appraisal officials would take either his comments or the city’s resolution to heart.
“I don’t think it will make any difference, but as citizens we need to express our feelings,” Roberts said.
Fulshear has been ground zero for what many residents say are excessive and unfair increases in property values. After seeing tax appraisals increase by as much as 2300 percent, a group of residents banded together under the name Citizens Against High Tax Appraisals to fight what they call a property tax system that is out of control.
Last month, the group literally filled the Fulshear council chambers to overflowing to ask council members for their support.
Melisa Roberts spoke on behalf of the group of more than 60 residents present. She called the rise in Fulshear-area appraisals a “crisis.”
“We are facing a crisis in our city today in which many of us are at risk of losing our homes and property. In the last two years, our tax appraisals have skyrocketed,” Roberts said.
She showed her own recent appraisal notices to illustrate the dramatic increases in appraised values in the Fulshear area.
“In 2008, I personally saw an increase of 1100 percent on my property. This year, that had increased by 2300 percent – and you heard that correctly, 2300 percent,” she said. “There are hundreds of us in this community who have similar stories.”
Roberts said while Fulshear appears the hardest hit in Fort Bend County, the problem of runaway property tax appraisals can be found throughout the state and nation. People are at risk of losing their property because they cannot pay skyrocketing tax bills, she told the council.
“Sadly, this goes beyond the additional thousands of dollars that it will cost each of us to be able to keep our property. We have all enjoyed a country which is known as a land of opportunity. With tax increases such as this, there is no opportunity for any of us,” she said. “When we get to the point in our society that we and our neighbors, friends and family risk losing everything we’ve worked for due to high tax appraisals, we are eliminating the middle class. Soon there will only be two classes – the rich who can afford these taxes and the rest of us who cannot.”
She said residents feel their hands are tied and they cannot fight the entrenched appraisal system alone.
“We are not the first group to organize to fight tax appraisal districts across Texas; however, with your help and support, we can change legislation to make us the last group of people to have to fight these battles,” Roberts said.
Since that time, the group has held two meetings at the Irene Stern Community Center to help educate residents about the valuation process and how to protest property tax values.
Both meetings were heavily attended and future meetings are being planned.
A long time future solution for FBCAD is to respects Texas state laws of ten percent annual limit icreases. Prohibitting comparing higher home price values, reasons for overriding our state laws.