Property tax data in the Utah is public information. You can have it, and so can your neighbors. In late 2022, the state auditor, John Dougall, asked one of his staff to look into the property tax issues in Wasatch County. Dougall’s request was prompted by property owners, our state senators, and others experiencing what they believed was unfair property taxation.
As a result, Dougal asked one of his senior staff members to look into the issues reported to him. Tina Cannon was given the job. After a few months and many interviews, she wrote a report that was quite critical of the State Tax Commission and Wasatch County assessor because both organizations failed to follow the laws.
One of the byproducts of her work was a statewide database of property data. The database called the Property Values Tool (https://transparent.utah.gov/property.php ) has data on property values throughout the state if the counties provide their data as requested.
As you might have guessed, the incumbent Wasatch County assessor, Todd Griffin, did not supply any data until recently, and then it was incomplete. The data was originally requested by June 2023. The data supplied is incomplete and is not in the database.
The database shows property values in a color scheme such that outliers — either high or low — in a neighborhood can be easily identified. The data can also be downloaded for further analysis. This database tool was developed in a few weeks in contrast to what various county assessors and the State Tax Commission said would take years.
The state database has fields for various types of data, commercial vs. residential, number of bedrooms, number of floors, square footage on the main floor, and square footage in the basement. These are key parameters that a bank uses to evaluate when a buyer wants a loan.
These more detailed parameters are not used by Wasatch County in their property valuation, but they should be. They add the basement square footage to the main floor square footage and apply one value to both areas. As any property buyer or real estate professional knows, basements are not valued like a main floor when a purchaser applies for a bank loan. This database would facilitate incorporating such values. However, county assessors must provide the data.
Bob Adams, candidate for the Wasatch County assessor, will not withhold data and promises to expand the property valuation to consider basement and main or second-floor areas when developing the property market value. When this data is provided, any taxpayer can download the data if desired to develop their argument for property appeals if they want to challenge the assessed value.
We hope you will attend the Republican Caucus on March 5 and support Adams. You can also learn more about Adams on www.adams4assessor.com.
You can find your precinct number and meeting information at this link: https://precinctportal.org/precinct/. The location has not yet been set, so we will send out another email when we receive that information.
If you are interested in becoming a delegate, let me know, and I can offer you some additional information.
Bill Quapp
Fair Tax Advocates