At its Oct. 15 regular meeting, the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners voted 7-0 to delay the 2025 tax reappraisal deadline by a year to Jan. 1, 2026, to give the county more time to assess property damage from Tropical Storm Helene.
Because water was unavailable at 200 College Street in downtown Asheville, where the board usually meets, the meeting was held remotely.
“Our [entire] appraisal staff has pivoted from their typical reappraisal duties to damage assessments,” Eric Cregger, interim property assessor, told the board.
“Our team is currently in the data collection and the analysis phase of that process, and we’re going to be spending months … performing field visits, auditing permit data and damage data, and making sure we’re making appropriate adjustments on every parcel that’s been affected by the storm,” Cregger continued.
Cregger said it was too early for the assessment team to know how the storm would affect property market prices.
“For that we need time,” Cregger said.
The reappraisal updates all of Buncombe County’s property values to reflect fair market value. The county derives 62% of its more than $440 million general fund from property taxes, which relies on the accurate assessment of thousands of properties. In December 2018, commissioners adopted a resolution to schedule the revaluation every four years starting Jan. 1, 2021.
The county kept the Jan. 1, 2025, deadline even after the board fired county Tax Assessor R. Keith Miller on Sept. 17 for what it deemed a conflict of interest after Miller bought a South Carolina condominium with an employee under his supervision. But the devastation wrought by Helene requires more time.
“Do we know at this point if moving the reappraisal process back 12 months is a sufficient period of time to do all of that assessment work, or is it something that we may not know until we get further into it?” board Chair Brownie Newman asked Cregger.
Cregger told the board that his staff did not yet know if one year would be enough time to finish storm damage assessments.
“We do know that we have to start looking at it this year, and as we get through the year, we’ll see how that’s going. We will have this conversation again and readjust where we need to be,” Cregger said.
The resolution states that the county will resume its normal reappraisal schedule starting Jan. 1, 2029.
In other news
- The board unanimously approved a budget amendment to establish an account for an anticipated $29 million FEMA award for Buncombe County. John Hudson, the county’s budget director, told the commissioners that more than half of the $29 million will go toward debris removal. The county has already spent $7 million from its general fund on recovery, which will be replaced with FEMA money, Lillian Govus, director of communications and public engagement, wrote in an email to Xpress.
- The board voted 7-0 to approve $1.7 million for a trash compactor for the Solid Waste Department.
- The board also approved a $1.2 million purchase agreement to buy three ambulances, payable in fiscal year 2026.
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