News

A difference of opinions

By Scott Wagar

03/05/2013

Editor’s Note: With the city of Bottineau announcing it has hired Vanguard Appraisals to conduct the city’s residential appraisal this summer, the Bottineau Courant conducted an investigation with three communities in the state of North Dakota where Vanguard conducted appraisals to receive personal opinions’ on their towns’ appraisals. Here is what the Bottineau Courant discovered.

When it comes to appraisals, one thing is for certain, local town residents and businesses owners do not like them, especially when it comes to paying taxes.

RIVERDALE

For Ken Skuza, the mayor of Riverdale, his experiences with Vanguard have not been a pleasant experience as a resident, council member and now as mayor.

“I would look at things very carefully before I jump into this one. I would highly suggest that the council do a lot of research on the cities that have hired them to see if the local people are happy with them or not,” Skuza said. “But, I can tell you Riverdale is not happy with them.”

During the initial residential appraisals four years ago in Riverdale, Skuza stated that the average appraisal went up around 20 percent throughout the entire town.

GARRISON

Steve Hasenwinkel, council member in the city of Garrison, sees Vanguard Appraisals as reasonable.

“They were pretty fair,” Hasenwinkel said. “The program worked out pretty good. They did what they said they would do, and their staff worked with the residents. “They did what they said; however, the people weren’t really happy, but then people do not like paying more taxes.”

Hasenwinkel added that the biggest concerns Garrison is presently handling is that local residents are selling their homes for more money than the homes are worth, causing difficulties in the community.

BOTTINEAU

When it comes to Bottineau, Karen Larson, owner of a commercial property in town, isn’t looking forward in having her residential property in the community appraised by Vanguard.

“Vanguard basically did a cosmetic appraisal to my business, they didn’t do a thorough job as they appraised my shop,” Larson said. “The appraiser who came wouldn’t even go into my basement even though I asked him to. And, my appraisal was much higher then some of the other local businesses which were similar to mine. If the city plans to go with Vanguard for the residential appraisal, I think they can expect another Key Party.”

The Key Party in Bottineau happened when Vanguard did the commercial appraisals of Bottineau’s businesses. The majority of the local business owners where so upset by the appraisals, they held a Key Party during its public meeting where the owners walked up to the council table and dropped their business’ keys into a basket, symbolizing they couldn’t afford to keep their businesses open with the high appraisals they were given.

Larson did add that when it comes to higher taxes, Vanguard doesn’t play as an important role than city council members do, because taxes primarily depends on where the city is holding its mill levy. For Bottineau, the mill levy was left a little higher for the 2013 budget because of future development plans in the city this year.

However, Mayor Ben Aufforth stated in January that the city’s leadership would be working on reducing the mill levy for the 2014 city budget, but with the current higher mill levy it is uncertain where residential taxes will end up for property owners.

For now, the tale of these three cities all hold a different prospective on Vanguard, which time will only bring this issue to light for the people of Bottineau.