Atlanta

Neighbors hold community meeting to fight high assessments

By Carl Willis
By Carl Willis

ATLANTA — Concern, questions and anger growing over tax assessments that have some Fulton County homeowners wondering how they're going to fight or pay sky-high tax bills.

"It's skewed and it's not fair and doesn't reflect fair market value and that's why people are complaining," commercial Realtor Bryan Grant told Channel 2’s Carl Willis.

"It's completely unreasonable," resident Nikolaos Vasiloglou said.

[READ: Some homeowners not happy with latest property assessment]

Grant said the tax assessment on his home went up 86 percent over last year.

He was front and center at a meeting for the Underwood Hills Neighborhood Association Wednesday. He said he's already working on how to prevent soaring increases from happening again.

He said an assessed-value cap like the 3 percent Save Our Homes cap in Florida is necessary.

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"I've gotten that law and passed it on to my attorney. Hopefully, we can get it drafted for Georgia and get it voted on in the next 12-24 months," Grant said.

The county is behind in its tax digest and playing catch-up.

County officials told Channel 2 Action News the average assessment went up about 13 percent over this time last year, and 19,000 property owners saw their appraisals jump more than 50 percent.

[READ: Neighbors vow to fight 'sky-high' assessments]

"The good news is the Board of Commissioners today passed a resolution asking the board to take whatever action is appropriate to resolve this problem as quickly as possible," said former Fulton County Commissioner Rob Pitts.

Grant said it's for the good of the county that they fix this quickly.

"If I were someone relocating a business to this area, I would avoid that county because it seems haphazard and unplanned. And if they do things that way they must be doing things in other departments that way," Grant said.

Cox Media Group

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