OCR Text |
Show tarty fig8G8enQ!i rati owops of assessment to fair market mar-ket value." Presumably this means that local assessors will be required to make ad justments each year to prevent pre-vent further slippage of as -sessment ratios. The initial aim of the re -valuation program was to equalize the general level of local assessments at about 20 percent of fair market value. In general, the program pro-gram has come reasonably close to achieving this 20 percent objective, at least in the initial stages following revaluation. However, because be-cause of inflation and rapidly rapid-ly changing property values, the Initial equalization results re-sults soon become outdated. Still to be completed in the first cycle of the reappraisal reap-praisal program are Carbon, Salt Lake, Sanpete and Sevier Counties. New valuations are scheduled to be placed on the tax rolls this year (1978) in Salt Lake County with the other three counties scheduled for completion by 1979. If the 20 percent valuation val-uation objective is achieved, the increase in Salt Lake County local assessments would average 82 percent. Legislation enacted last year will delay implementation implementa-tion of new assessed values that will be developed during the second cycle of the reappraisal re-appraisal program until after the work is completed in all 29 counties of the state. Local assessors, however, how-ever, will be required to "maintain their local ratios The assessment ratio of all locally assessed property proper-ty in Beaver County averaged averag-ed 13.20 percent during 1977. This fact was reported by Utah Foundation, the private tax research organization, in their analysis of an assessment assess-ment sales ratio study recently prepared by the State Tax Commission. The study shows that assessment as-sessment levels of locally-assessed locally-assessed property throughout through-out the State last year averaged av-eraged 12.88 percent and ranged from a low of 5.63 percent in Sanpete County to a high of 18.95 percent in Juab County. Sanpete County Coun-ty never has been revalued under the state wide reappraisal reap-praisal program while Juab County was revalued in 1976, property in Beaver County was reassessed in 1974. According to the Foundation Founda-tion report, property as-sement as-sement ratios have been declining de-clining generally despite the fact that the first cycle of the revaluation program has been completed in 25 of Utah's 29 counties. Assessment Assess-ment levels in Utah have declined de-clined from an average of 17.98 percent inl967to 12.88 percent in 1977. Foundation analysts point out that the effect of the property revaluation program pro-gram has been to equalize assessments among individual indivi-dual properties and to raise ' assessment levels In the counties that are revalued. During recent years, real estate values have been raising rais-ing faster than the assessment assess-ment changes. As a result, the overall average state wide level of assessment has been declining. |