 I want to thank all of you who made it here on time. We have coffee, we have some muffins in the back. I want to get started, but I want to give my colleagues who are going to be helping present today a little time to get here. We're expecting my good friend Mike Villarreal, who as many of you know was a state representative in this area for many years, and he's somewhat of an expert on property taxes. He's currently teaching the course today, and Mike, in addition to after he graduated from Central Catholic, went to A&M, and then Harvard, and he's working, if not already, he's working on his PhD, so he's quite a educated young man. He's a great dad and he's a good man, he's a good friend. There you go. Thank you. So in addition to that, we have Diego Bernal and former city councilman out here. He's going to join us and city councilman Roberto Trevino, I heard he was going to be here, and commissioner Tommy Caver. So everybody wanted to be excited about seeing what we could do to help you. Now the good news is this, this is not a meeting about speeches, this is a meeting about tools. Tools to actually help you. At one point, I remember Mike and the chief appraiser being very good friends, and I'm not sure if it was because Mike was giving people too many good information on how to use it and how to fight their property tax appraisers or what happened, but there seemed to be a little bit of a disconnect at one point. So hopefully what we're going to get today is we're going to get information that you're going to be able to use, and I understand some people had concerns about the timing. Well, in order to get all of these folks' schedules to work at the same time, this was the day, this was the time that was able to happen, and so if there's any representative Diego Bernal has walked in, come on in, come on in representative, we are waiting on some of our colleagues, come on in. And looking dapper as always, I mean, you know it is Saturday morning, I think you're, come on up, come on up. Thank you for welcoming us into your state rep district, come on up, say a few welcome. I've just been housekeeping, letting people know the coffee. Where are the restrooms, by the way? I haven't asked. Okay. Out the door, take a right, and there's a hallway behind, like behind that wall. Women's on the right, men's to the left, okay? So that's important. The other thing is feel free to come and go as you need. If you get a chance, put your communication device, I'm assuming everybody's cell phone on vibrate, and just as we get representative Villarreal to get here, we're going to get started as possible. So come on up and say a few welcome remarks. All right. Good morning, you guys. I know we're going to get to Saturday, but we really appreciate you guys being here. A couple of things. I think that you should expect to see more collaboration among offices. I believe that when you've got people like the councilman, the senator myself who represent the same folks, the more we work together, the more effective we can be, the more we can effectuate policies, the more we can do things on your behalf. The issue in particular it's really important for two primary reasons. One, know what you need to know so that you can go and defend yourselves. But the other thing is that clearly over time collectively at the school district level, at the city level, at the county level, and at the state level we're going to have to do something about this because it's getting a little bit unwieldy. And I'll tell you that one of the things that my office is laser focused on is this phenomenon. And we're not necessarily going to get to it today, but this will help inform our own work and research and that is that there is a phenomenon in this city, in the center city in particular where homeowners who have lived in their home for quite some time are slowly getting taxed out of their homes. Now I understand if you're a new arrival or maybe a renter that that's sort of a tough pill to swallow, but if you haven't hit 65 and you've lived in a home that you've owned for 25, 30 years and you want to sell it for four times that which you bought it for, great. If you'd like to stay and be a part of all the great changes that are happening around you, we need to make sure that we find a way that allows you to stay. And so this conversation certainly is to help you understand taxes and be able to defend yourselves and at the same time it's an opportunity for us to gather information so we can go about crafting effective policies. Now there's a neighborhood on the east side that has asked me to visit them so I may step out a little bit after 10 o'clock, but I really appreciate you guys being here. And the other thing is Representative Vidal, Mike when he gets here he had incredibly big shoes to fill for me. And he did this on a regular basis so it's really nice for us to bring him back out to do this exercise. So thank you guys very much. If you need anything from my staff, the senator's staff, all these folks here are ready to help you. The councilman staff is here also. But in any case we really appreciate you guys getting up on a Saturday morning and spending time with us and with one another and we actually hope that you exchange information with one another so you can stay in touch and build coalitions. Thank you guys. So I want to thank Representative Diego Bernal. One of the things that I've been so impressed about Diego is his hands on approach and one of the things that he's done recently that's really in his desire to visit every single public school that he has in his district, what's come out of those is the absolute unbelievable food insecurity that we have in our city. Where so many of our children are only eating at school and so much food is being wasted and so I want to thank you for that because that is really some, we're working on something on how we can make sure that these children have the ability to eat in the evening and eat on the weekends and so the food bank helps but it doesn't solve all the problems and we're working on a solution. Maybe there can be a statewide so I want to thank you for that work as well. So today if you've seen this on your seat what this means is that NowCastSan Antonio.com, they are streaming today's online event so if you know someone who is part of your Facebook family or someone that couldn't make it today, you want to send them a text or send them a message and let them know that they can actually observe this today. This will be, I want to thank the good people from NowCast.com, San Antonio.com they decided to do this on their own. If you're shy we do have in the back, Time Warner and the Ravard Report is also going to be here and like I said, this is going to be and I think that Diego alluded to this. This is a constituent driven town hall. We hear the complaints we hear the concerns especially when the last appraisals came out and I think everybody in San Antonio's went up, ours went up, everybody's went up and we need to know how but one of the things that happened in California, Diego and California in particular our seniors literally were being priced out. Not I shouldn't say our seniors, their seniors were priced out of their homes so they did something where they froze their appraisals and we've got to be looking at what we're going to do next session to help our senior citizens and be able to stay in their home. So for those of you who don't know the process for appeal or why your home was suddenly valued, that's why you need to after today, you need to take the knowledge that you're going to take from today and move forward. Now where is Tomas? Tomas, why don't you get our staff and the councilman staff, all of the staff to come up here. So let's start off with our team. So as you see the guy in the sports coat walk forward, this is Tomas Larraldo, he's our chief of staff and I'm going to ask him to have the rest of our staff come up here. So I see, come on, this is Miss Pearl Cruz come on Miss Lopez and Miss Judy. Miss Judy Peterson, Miss Lopez, Annalisa Romero is in the back. Come on up. Diego, where's your team? Have them come on up too. So all of these people who are coming up work for you. So do you have one of our cards? Pull out one of our cards. Our cards, we print they're in the back. Okay, we print one card for everybody and that card has our office phone number here in Wonderland Mall, our office contact information in Austin, Texas and it has everybody's email, mine and everybody else's. Yep, there you go. Someone's waving the cards. It's a big, it's a big, like three by five card and that's the card for the whole team. And so you with Chief of Staff Representative Diego Bernal and so and Emiliano's outside of Emiliano Romero. So this, you know, what's interesting about these teams is, you know, they get paid to work, you know, like everybody else. So 40 hour work week Monday through Friday. So this is their here on their time away from their family. So I want to give them a big round of applause for what they're doing. Oh, here are the cards. If anybody needs a card, please, you know, raise your hand here. Let's pass these out. And did you are we, we're expecting the Councilman, right? No. So do you come up and say a few words on his behalf? Thank you, Senator. My comments will be extremely brief. Councilman Thervino couldn't be here today. He's on a plane coming in from Europe, but he wanted me to thank you, Senator and Representative Bernal for this wonderful collaborative effort and bringing this very important topic to the forefront to the residents of San Antonio, the taxpaying residents, and he looks forward to any future collaborations that these offices might have to present to you very important information and have you the chance to ask questions for things that you don't understand. And I will too be here representing the Councilman staff if you have any questions for me. So thank you. We just walked in our good friend, your good friend, one of the most dynamic young leaders at this county, seen in a long time. I'm so glad that Commissioner's Court has this young man up there because he brings a breath of fresh air and I'm not saying that just because he's as young as he is, but because he's got the views he's new to the Commissioner's Court. And what I love about his attitude, he reminds me a lot of when Diego and I were on City Council is he goes out and visits a lot of neighborhood meetings and so he's taken a different approach than what traditionally has been at Commissioner's Court and so without further ado, a good friend of all of ours, Commissioner Tommy Caver. Come up, Tom. Appreciate it. Thank you. Well, good morning. It's great to see so many friends here and I want to thank Senator Menendez, of course, for his leadership. It's tremendous and great for hosting this seminar with Representative Diego Bernal, Councilman Trevino, and I want to acknowledge Mary Ellen from Congressman Lloyd Doggett's office, our champion in Washington, D.C. Thank you for being here. This community is very blessed to have some of the hardest working collective elected officials, I think in the state of Texas and anywhere in the country who have your interest at heart. I saw this post on the Senator's Facebook page and I wanted to be here to let you know a little something about what I'm working on in partnership with Senator Menendez and Representative Bernal and others in the Texas Senate and the Texas House. This tax issue, the rising property tax issue is very difficult to deal with but what seems to be coming out of Lieutenant Governor Patrick's office to me is another gimmick, another bumper sticker solution that isn't really going to give you substantive feeling in your pocket book where it matters. I'm just trying to apply a little common sense to our taxation process and so Lieutenant Governor Patrick has a special committee on taxation and they held a hearing here in San Antonio at UTSA. Senator Uresti sits on that committee. Here is my policy solution that I think you may feel a lot better than what we've been doing by hamstringing local governments. I believe that we ought to give local taxing districts, meaning your city, county, hospital district, all of the taxing entities you see on your taxing bill. The ability to carve out special taxing districts where we see hyper inflation of values and index your net property taxes to inflation. So inflation tends to be one to four percent. If your paycheck isn't growing by 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50 percent how are you expected to keep up with your property taxes doing that year after year? By doing that you'll be able to plan, you'll be able to have a good perspective on what your future tax bill will be. But my plan would require a state constitutional amendment. Now here's the good news. Your senator, Senator West of Dallas who I pitched this to, Senator Menendez, they think that the speaker and others in the Republican party may help us to get this idea done. The reason it requires a constitutional amendment across the state of Texas is because of the fact that there is a clause in the Texas Constitution that talks about fair and equal taxation for all people. And so the beauty of this policy is that it works for gentrifying areas as well as the dominion. And I think you can find bipartisan support for the policy. I also like, and I don't know, Diego did you get the chance to pitch your idea here right before it came? Okay, well your representative, Diego Bernal, a brilliant star in the Texas House, has another fantastic idea on taxes which I support his policy plan a lot more than I do Lieutenant Governor Patrick's as well. So whichever one you've got two representatives here that are coming up with some creative solutions and his doesn't require a constitutional amendment so I'll support his if it's easier to do. Whatever works. But, you know, every time the Republicans in the Senate and House pass something, you know, they beat their chest that here we pass property tax relief and et cetera, et cetera. But none of us ever feel it, do we? No. So doing the same thing over and over again is not a solution. So I'm just so grateful for this day where and thanks to Senator Menendez and also Representative Mike Villarreal for still serving us and giving us a good education today on how to protest our property taxes. We're going to save a little money today. But, you know, if we're going to have, we need the economic development and revitalization that comes in our historic neighborhoods. But we all know that the tension between folks feeling that their property taxes are going up because of that economic development is something that could torpedo that progress. So taxpayers have to have some sort of substantive relief in their pocketbooks and I just wanted to stop by to let you know we are working on your behalf even when you're not aware of it. We're working on your behalf to try to get real solutions to help your pocketbooks. So thank you, Senator. Thank you, Representative. Thank you, Councilman. Thank you, Representative, for being here. Appreciate you. Well, you see why we're so excited about Tommy. He is a rising star and I don't like to just cubby-hole him in any one particular party but he's just working hard on behalf of everybody. And that's what I think we learned so well when we serve our communities that we serve the communities irrespective of we don't look at boundaries from a neighborhood perspective and we don't look at boundaries from a partisan perspective. We want to know what's the best thing to do for San Antonio, for Bear County and for Texas for all people. So our PhD candidate, I wanted to call him Dr. Villarreal but he's almost there. He's almost there. I'm very proud of Mike because not just because of us being such good friends but we've known each other since we were teenagers going to school together and I've just had the pleasure of seeing him and his beautiful wife and his family grow. I remember taking pictures when your kids were crawling on top of the desk at the swearing in ceremony and now they're just big playing baseball and soccer and everything else. So just so you know, a little bit of housekeeping. Nowcast is a non-profit organization that is, like I said, live streaming this. They have mics on that mic center right in the center of that aisle. So if you have a question at some point so that the people that are watching this at home can hear what your question is, please if you would instead of just standing up at your place, if you don't mind going, if you can't, we'll have a staff person go and repeat your question because we want everybody who's watching at home to be able to hear your question so that they can also get the value of the answer. Nowcast is a non-profit organization that has just chosen to do this on their own and we will provide a contribution and donation and I want to say in all fairness that you never even asked for anything so I want to thank you all for just volunteering to do this and those of us who can will be supportive of you. So without further ado I want to bring up our good friend, Representative Mike Villarreal. Good friends here, thank you for showing up and coming to learn something very important which is how to pay less in property taxes, right? So I think we're working on the presentation slide but while they are managing that process which technology, what are you going to do? You rely on it so much and then when it doesn't seem to work you're stuck but hopefully this will be fixed very shortly. Last night I was sort of thumbing through some different documents and came across some interesting history when it comes to taxation and specifically property taxes. There have always been taxes as long as there have been people living in community together in civilizations there has always been an effort to collect resources to manage challenges that the community faces and those resources are taxes and this is true across the long story of humanity and along the way we've learned some interesting things. Like for example in taxing property England at one time wanted to figure out well how do we get people to pay and also it be sort of a reflection on wealth and so they believed at one time that well having windows in your home is really a sign of wealth because at that time it was a difficult thing to put in lots of windows so they counted how many windows your house had and that was a function of how much taxes you pay until people started to build homes with fewer windows and it got to the point where it became a health issue that houses didn't have proper circulation and so they did away with that tax and then they went to a tax on bricks because you know if your house had a lot of bricks well it must be a big house and therefore you should pay more because you have more wealth you're living in a bigger house and so that went along okay for a couple of years but then brick makers were incentivized to create bigger bricks and then there was Amsterdam where they thought okay we're going to measure the house we're going to measure the house but they didn't fully measure the house they just measured the front width of the house they made them really thin and tall the thinnest home in Amsterdam is about 31 inches in width and so there's this really interesting and long history of people, us recognizing we have shared challenges and we need to figure out how to share in putting forward our resources to overcome those challenges but there's been an equally long story of us also trying to figure out how to get out of paying those taxes and so here we are today in the state of Texas which has no income tax and therefore it relies on our property tax system to generate state and local revenue to pay for everything from our schools to police force fire protection, our roads, our criminal justice system the safety net that we do have we pay for all of it with two taxes one primarily property taxes and then the second is a sales tax but the property tax is the big workhorse in the state of Texas, if you rank all of the states in our nation we're number five in property taxes and so we have had to figure out how to raise an adequate amount of money in this, if you take the big picture low tax state while also meeting our needs and also trying to manage this dynamic which is always going to be present and that is individuals trying to get out of paying their fair share and so I believe our state has actually devised a pretty good system which has a protest process so if you really object to what your property tax bill is then there is a process for you to legally challenge you don't have to decrease the number of windows in your home or seek out bigger bricks or build this skinny house there is a right way of going about trying to challenge your assessment and that's what we're here to learn about this morning as soon as this presentation is up we will jump straight into it I want to make sure you have one document that I believe Senator Menendez's office copied and that is a one pager sort of things to do, do you have that, has that been passed out why don't we take this time to pass out that one pager because it will also be good to have it in your hand here it comes great we got copies so that is being passed out this is so there's a presentation which Thomas has a new computer it looks like is going to put up on the screen but we also have this one pager it's sort of a brain dump I put everything that I believe is a checklist that you need to know in getting ready to challenge your property taxes and if you have a pencil or pen that sheet is a good place to take notes as I walk you through this presentation how about to make the most of all of our time as soon as the sheets get passed out why don't we flip the presentation and how long do you think this will be three minutes okay we'll give you three minutes I was going to suggest if it takes any longer we flip it and I just start taking questions we might turn to that if this technical difficulty doesn't get overcome it's in public policy with a focus on statistics and education policy while they're still working on the presentation I was passed a note just a public awareness there's a company that is soliciting their services to loan you money to pay your property taxes and you got a postcard okay so here's something you should know about this industry if they can get you to borrow money from them at a high interest rate they will in effect put a lien on your house a tax lien and that tax lien is first it's a primary lien it's above your mortgage it's above the bank's lien on your home if you still have a mortgage and so this is a big problem because for them the way they make their money is they want you to be late on that payment so they can take your house and repossess it and so it's all the cards are really stacked against the homeowner who maybe unwittingly goes in and enters into one of these arrangements thinking oh well I'll just pay my property taxes because I need to and if I don't then the local government is going to take away my house well this is even worse and there's more recourse on being late on your property taxes I'm not recommending that but what I am recommending is that be very very careful with anybody who wants to loan you money to pay your property taxes that this is a really problematic risky industry to be doing business with how are we doing on the presentation okay does everybody have that one pager now? okay you have my presentation on hard copy? well if you can pass me the presentation on hard copy and I'll kind of walk through it I have another one thank you so now cast who is here and recording this presentation has a copy of the presentation and we'll also put it on line and it'll be streaming live and so that will also be a resource for those who are not here physically present so this is the sixth annual workshop that I've put on and it's been a real learning experience in how to communicate kind of the essential pieces of information so here's some interesting facts and I'll start going through this presentation while they put it up for you to read on the on the big screen this is why it's important to challenge your property taxes number one 70% of the challenges that occurred just recently the data I have is 2013 but it hasn't it's been pretty stable year to year 70% of those homeowners have realized a decrease in their assessed value 70% those are really good probabilities and why is that? well the reason is that bear county appraisal district does an estimation of your home there are thousands in bear county we're a population of nearly 1.5 million people and so they have to at a very high level collect data analyze it and then put a value on your home but you live in that home and you know more details on that property than they do and so in a way this process really relies on you to step forward and bring more information and perspective on your home and your neighborhood and what's really happening in your neighborhood and so it's really in this process of the homeowner stepping forward and challenging the first offer made by BCAD in that process what we do is we get better at the true value of the house and so most of you taking the effort and time to go down is going to pay off I believe that because the numbers show that ultimately you do get an adjustment in the value of your home now do you get exactly what you want no probably not but if you keep this up every year not as like I can't believe I have to do this this year but rather as well it's that time of year it's time to inform BCAD that they got it wrong again and here's the right value over time you'll have a more affordable tax rate and certainly BCAD will be properly assessing your home and if more people in your neighborhood did this then the collective assessment of what BCAD believes is going on in your neighborhood will actually be lower and it will be easier for everybody what's really challenging is when a property owner in your neighborhood gets an assessment that is not appropriate very high and that property owner will have to protest if it gets put on the books and it becomes the true value in the eyes of BCAD and BCAD will refer back to it as evidence to justify what they believe the value of your home is and so the more people yay who participate in this process we all are when I was a member of the legislature I contemplated the idea of changing the name of this from protest to something else because my grandmother would never protest anything there are people who just don't protest we need to figure out a different way of thinking about this I always thought changing the name but nobody really agreed with me so it continues to be called a protest but we all need to participate in this because ultimately I think we all get a better assessment of our homes can we go to the next slide please so timeline April 23rd notices went out May 1st that is the deadline to claim your homestead exemption that's one of the first things everybody should do here we are May 28th if you haven't done it going forward and even regardless BCAD will adjust will take into account if this is really your homestead value and so look on your one pager that they mail to you make sure that your house has the homestead exemption if it doesn't though we're past the deadline they're not required to but they have the discretion to apply the homestead exemption and so you should take that to them the next deadline is May 31st this is the deadline for notifying BCAD and I'm using acronyms BCAD is Bayer County Appraisal District May 31st is the deadline to let them know you're going to be protesting that is very important you got to meet that deadline if you miss that deadline it's pretty unforgiving and so you still got time make sure that you get that in you know that you've experienced that and thank you for raising your hand at any time anybody wants to jump in with a comment or question there is a mic right back there feel free to because this session is being broadcast for the benefit of those who are still in their pajamas and watching us ask your question so they can hear for those who have not done the notifications before and gone through the process there's two ways if you're a homeowner number one you can take the form that they sent you and fill it out there's like five boxes or you can go online and notify them electronically through the internet there is a user credential and a password temporary password at the top of the paper that was mailed to you you take those two IDs go to their website create an account for yourself follow their steps and notify them electronically yes excellent the real expert it can be mailed it can be walked in office there are select few that can do the online protest so when you received your protest form if it didn't give you a form in there that says you're eligible to file online you're not able to and those that all homeowners are able to if you have a homesteaded property and you don't have an agent attached to your account then yes you should be able to the big cleave is commercial property owners and please join me up here because I am the first to say I don't have the answers for everything and so really please join me and what is your name again appreciate you joining us my question deals with who are these people that they put into office and are all of these assessment companies the same do they all function under the same guidelines or each of them are autonomous when you say these people are you talking about folks who come and assess the value of your home yes well they are public employees that work for bear county appraisal district and you're getting at the big questions of sort of the macro of why do we have this and how does it operate and I'm happy to are they equitable and is there a standard or do they all follow whatever is created in the local yes great questions let me give you a brief answer and then we can move into how to protest your property appraisal we're talking about public employees the standard of the application of BCAD is not contracted out though they do collect lots of data from different sources including this protest process but they also acquire data from publicly available and also they purchase data from data providers on sales information in particular the standards that they go by there are just that our chief appraiser has to have and people who appraise homes also have to hold and they follow a standard general practice for assessing property but let's you know before we get into these kind of questions that I think are about like how do we change the whole system let's it needs to be changed and this is about important public policies I also know that folks here are wanting to prioritize how do I just protest my property taxes this year and let's hold off and you'll be the next one residents homestead this presentation is really tailored to home owners who are trying to protest the values of the homes they live in some of the information can be extended to investment properties but really this presentation is meant for those of us who own our home and want to try challenging the assessment ourselves and so here are some exemptions that you just need to know about the school district has a an exemption bear county government has an exemption and the way that is realized on your notification you'll see the assessed value for every property taxing entity and then you'll see the taxable value and for these entities and I believe there's a third what oh the flood control they also discount the assessed value and so you'll see assessed value and then taxable value and you actually see a reduction in what gets taxed and these are the big main entities that reduce the property value that ends up getting taxed make sure that there is a reduction on your notification it should be because it's sort of a standard part of the rules process you don't have to apply for it it happens automatically the other bullet point your assessed value can rise 50% it can rise 100% it can rise whatever they think it needs to rise by in order to reflect market value but what gets taxed can only rise by 10% year to year that doesn't mean you should not worry and not protest the assessed value because once the higher assessed value gets put on the books your property is going to rise by 10% every year until you hit that higher value and every year going forward if they keep on increasing the value of your property it will keep on rising higher and you'll be hitting 10% for multiple years however long it takes to hit the market value and so don't get too comfortable with that benefit because it's like a slow drip drip drip if you don't believe the assessed value is an accurate reflection then you should immediately protest let's go to the next slide two main ways to protest home values on step one on the back of your form where you notify Bear County that you're going to be protesting there are two boxes so Senator Menendez and Representative Diego Bernal here's a suggestion and everybody should be listening there should really just be one box in my opinion because as a homeowner you want to be able to make both arguments if you don't check both boxes you're not allowed to make arguments on both fronts and there are two different arguments you can disagree with BCAD and say this isn't the market value of my home I can't sell my house for that much money you can make that argument based on cells that are happening in your neighborhood but you can also make the argument that well maybe you've got the right value of my house but my neighbor who's living in the same house of mine or 20% less or 10% less the Constitution says if we're going to have a property tax system it has to be equal in uniform and so because you're giving him a big discount you have to give me the same discount and that argument is called equal in uniform the equity argument the law says as a property owner you have to check both boxes if you're going to make both arguments and if you fail to check one you do not have access to that argument and so I'd love for that to just be one box just check it go forward bring your arguments and let it be whatever it is because there are a lot of folks who fail to check the equity box on the day of their opportunity to be heard they try to make the equity argument and they can't no adjustment can be made because they didn't check the right box and that seems to be a technicality that I don't know it just seems unfair to get thrown out just because you didn't check the right box that law hasn't changed yet so check both boxes make sure you check both boxes because that equity argument tends to be the most important argument you can make in Bear County and throughout Texas let's go to the next slide okay so the next part of the presentation I'm going to flesh out how you make both arguments how you argue on market value first slides and then we're going to turn to how to build your argument on equity my question is a protest for 2016 and when I filed for it there was a bunch of things that I found wrong with my home so when I submitted the request they approved it but my question to that is next year when I do the appeal you say there were a lot of things wrong with the home you mean like descriptions like how big your lot was no like the brick fell off the foundation was cracking it's cracking the quality yeah the quality of the home my question is next year are they going to raise my taxes again even though I filed yes it's a new day that's an excellent question every year it's like you're starting all over okay have you ever seen the movie Groundhog Day no it's a movie about a person who wakes up every morning to the same exact day and so this treat it like Groundhog Day every year it's like what you did last year never happened and so you have to go down all over and make the same arguments so next year can I file the same set of arguments yes ma'am even though I wasn't able to improve my home yes okay and also could I have applied for a lesser amount because on my value it set 95 for and I asked for that because I figured I can't go down any lower because I never protested the past years you can perform when you notify bcad what you believe the right value is that information is actually optional you don't even have to let them know or you could this year I chose to put in an estimate of what I think the value is but next year if I believe it's less then I can put in a lesser number next year you do not you're not required to to any given number whatever you believe the right value of your home is you can enter that number and it can go down and also the school district taxes at age 65 can I protest that or I mean I'm not there yet but when you turn 65 you can try protesting getting older but it won't work I've met lots of people who but here's what you can do absolutely you can always protest the assessed value now when you do turn 65 you have the benefit of having your property tax bill frozen for the major property tax entities like the school district which represents about 50% of your tax bill the city the county and there are some other entities what are their entities the college the community college district and what else and the flood control it's the over 65 exemption it's an incredible benefit to those of us who make it to 65 and I'm knocking on wood that we all do and so but even when you do and I'm a record who's an advocate for seniors she's she I know she doesn't look like she's over 65 but a little bird told me she was but she continues to protest her assessed value and that is actually something that maybe she doesn't realize the big benefit because most of her property taxes are frozen but it's a benefit to some of the entities freeze that part of the tax bill and it's also a benefit to her neighbors because to the extent that she can slow down the growth in the assessed value that benefits everybody and also I know they're doing lots of improvements on the highway does that affect the value of your house and if they start building houses because next to my house is a prison there's nothing else but the prison so I know they're working on the highways on expanding them does that affect my taxes to go up? Not in a direct way but you know you could theoretically make an argument that to the extent that infrastructure gets improved the values of property get are improving as well on a real hard concrete level if your house sells values increasing then it's not going to have an effect on your house and if they start building other homes as well if the value of the land and your home improve because market conditions are changing then yes you will see a change in the assessment of your home for example there's a lot of improvements that are being made along the river south of downtown and there are neighborhoods that are realizing above average turnover folks coming in buying properties fixing them up selling them that activity has an effect on homeowners that live in those same neighborhoods that have no plans on leaving their neighborhood but yeah that market activity is impacting everybody there in that neighborhood. And another question I know you said to check both boxes if I didn't check both of them next year when I file will that affect me or no okay so I can do it. And our resident expert let's ask the deadline hasn't passed is it too late to have her call, beacad and check the second box? Yes. Oh you've already had your hearing. No actually they approved it. Oh okay you've settled. Because I didn't know it was my first time doing it. Next year it's a new game you can check both boxes. Thank you those are all the questions I had. Alright she's here for business. Wanted to get her questions out of the way let's turn to the, no let's stay on that slide so let's focus on how to put an argument together challenging the market value of your home. This is where photos of your home and your personal knowledge of your home come into play. So you want to verify the information the district has on your property is correct. Sometimes they think you have a garage, detached garage on your property and maybe at one time you did. But it was decrepit it wasn't looking great so you demolished it. Well beacad doesn't necessarily know that. And so they rely on you to tell them I had this experience once. They were taxing a structure on my property that was no longer in existence. It was a chicken coop. Which apparently were very popular at one time in my neighborhood. But it was no longer there and so I shouldn't be taxed on it. They needed to know that. And so this is really important look over how they describe your property. The size of the lot the size of your home. If you have any other structures on the property. Is there still a swimming pool. These kind of things. Correcting that could make a big difference on what they believe the market value of your houses. Documenting your home. The conditions of your home. Are there repairs that aren't visible from the outside. Like this photo here. There was water damage. And there still may be a leaky pipe inside of that house. Photos need to be made. If you want to go the extra step. Which is a great idea. Calling somebody to give you an assessment on what it will take to fix the damage. And bringing that hard evidence to your hearing at beacad. In order to get them just. What they believe the market value of your houses. Because they've only seen it from the outside. Is a really powerful way of going about reducing the their estimate of market value. A picture really is worth a thousand words. And so photos are an excellent way of making this kind of documentation. Going beyond your home. On if you're making this argument. For example I live in a neighborhood that is very eclectic. And you can go one block down. And the houses are in just immaculate condition. It's like everybody has a gardener or something. You go on my street. There's still a property that has a blue tarp on the facade of their home. And it's been there all year. And the street is just not at the same condition. Well when beacad makes a judgment on my house. They're kind of looking at the whole neighborhood. They're not looking at the condition of every street. And so I took not just photos of my property but I also took photos of the surrounding properties. And so somebody said they live near a jail. It's important to take that photo. And let them know. Hey you might be looking at the market value of this general region of San Antonio. But just know in my backyard is the jail. And so take that into consideration. I don't think I can sell my house for what you think I can sell my house for. This is a great example. Here's a mortuary. I bet you the value of the homes that back up to the mortuary are different than if you live a couple of streets down. Even though the homes may be exactly the same size, exactly the same condition, living next to a mortuary probably dampens the appeal to new buyers of your house when the date comes for you to sell your house. Beacad needs to know that. That they don't have information. And so taking photos of surrounding properties is also really important. Next slide. So how to go about estimating the potential sales price of your house. Well thank goodness for the internet. There are some excellent sites that will actually publish sales information. The until this year most of the sites were only listing listing prices. But there is a website that I found recently like a couple of months ago called Redfin. And I have their I believe on the handout at the bottom their web address is listed here it is Redfin. And so you can go online create an account. You have to give them your email address if you want this to be free. But I did this and I plugged in my address and it gave me a set of houses and their sales information. This is information that's kind of hard to track down. This website will help you. Another good source if you have a friend who's a realtor. They have access to the what is that system called MLS. Thank you. Thank you. You've been to this presentation before haven't you. Okay there you go. So MLS so realtors have access to this now they're not supposed to let this be publicly known and but if you have a friend I don't know things happen information gets shared. But if you can somehow collect sales information number one this is a easy public source but if you have somebody in the real estate industry who has access to MLS that's also a good way of collecting sales information. So what do you want to do with that sales information once you collect it. So I pulled up those if you can go back to that slide. This collection of homes what I'm going to do is take down the size of every property how many bathrooms how many rooms how big the land is what the sales price information is pick properties that resemble my house same number of bedrooms same number of bathrooms it's hard to exactly get the same square footage but I'll take the sales value divided by the square footage to get a per square foot number and then try to apply that to my house this is not a perfect science but this is a close way of trying to get more evidence to demonstrate that the assessed value that BCAD has put on my home is higher than what homes are actually selling for in my area and that will help me make a very strong market value argument when it's my time to have a hearing. Okay let's go to one more slide. Okay we're about to enter the second argument before we tackle these slides let's take some more questions Betty. My hospital taxes are almost as much as my school taxes now now the hospital taxes were set up to take care of people that could not take care of themselves in Bear County. We are serving 22 other counties that do not pay taxes I want to know why they're not paying their taxes that's one and you're not the first person I have gone from Amosquita to Dostraus to La Larson to our own Tommy Calvert, someone needs to look into this. People now have insurance. Everyone is required to have insurance. Used to we took care of the people in Bear County because they did not, they were injured and we needed to take care of them but now the seniors are needing that exemption and that deduction and not to pay hospital taxes. And I am 85. Thank you for your concern for larger issues bigger than your self always being involved in. Can you tell me why Mike? Because that's the law. The problem is who's making this law because that's what I'm getting football around. Who made the law that we should pay hospital taxes when we have this and they're increasing every year. Our state legislature and let me explain the rationale okay and we're not going to be able to solve this right now but here's what you should know. Our public hospital receives funding not just from our property taxes but it receives federal revenue and it's actually primarily federal revenue and that revenue gets assigned to Bear County hospital district based on not just how many people live in Bear County but also the surrounding areas that we're supposed to serve and so in a way we are tied to the surrounding counties and why is that why can't they have their own hospital district and pay their own well it turns out if everybody had a public hospital in every county surrounding Bear County nobody would have a great public hospital. There needs to be some focus, some centralization where top tier doctors train and bring their specialty and in fact our best doctors that's not widely known in Bear County but our best doctors our most highly trained specialized advanced doctors work at our public hospital at university hospital no doubt about it if somebody in my family gets sick and I need serious advanced help that's where we go and so not every county can have this level of service Bear County is the biggest one we happen to have it we get the benefits of it being within our county but we also have some burden and that is we end up having to serve people who surround Bear County and so that is the rationale but you still want your exemption I understand that so maybe legislators who are here can take that concern with you how do you get the other counties to pay we don't we can't we can't get them they're supposed to voluntarily enter into an agreement I think some in the surrounding counties do but this is sort of this is a long established trend where folks in rural areas don't pay the same level of taxes as those that live in urban counties do and now on the other hand we're less likely to be subjected to the limited conditions and limited infrastructure and limited services in rural areas for example in some parts of Texas you can't find a doctor and we've tried to change that it's really hard to get doctors who go through advanced education to go out in rural Texas and live there and so they have to on the flip side live in an area where they don't have the kind of quality services we have access to so it's it's you know try to put yourself in their shoes also now I understand you still want the exemption I get that and that still might be possible if our legislators take your concerns to Austin and I actually think this coming legislative session I wouldn't be surprised if there is a bill to try to tinker with our property tax system and or even to make big changes when you have that kind of legislation working itself through the process you have an opportunity to add on an amendment to deliver a tax exemption so I actually think there's an opportunity to address this concern of yours one more question and then we'll jump into the two quick questions what kind of condition exists that can cause your taxes to go higher than 10% in one year what can cause it to go higher than 10% well one answer up front is a magic pencil so one answer and this is a real one in I live just south of downtown market values have increased tremendously and and I'll tell you a personal story my house increased by almost $150,000 from one year to the next the only thing I did I put up a privacy fence a short one I don't think it's worth $150,000 so the value if BCAD succeeds in increasing my property by 25% I will only be taxed on a 10% increase but that 10% will be in place every year until I reach the new value that BCAD has put on my house so what's the appraisal lady can she answer that appraisal lady because mine went over there over 10% it's like a misleading statement that you all had earlier when you said 10% and that's not true so I know there's some other conditions it probably should be a caveat or something so if your taxable value there's two types of values one is the assessed value and let's say your house is assessed last year at $100,000 and this year the proposal is that it's assessed at $120,000 what you're going to be taxed on this year is not 120 it's 110 so the taxable value is what's capped at 10% the assessed value can grow at 10% but the tax value is limited to 10% now the next year if the value doesn't even go up more it will automatically increase up to $120,000 because the only limit is that the taxable value goes up to 100% every year the other quick question is if you overpaid your taxes in the past years what's the process of fighting that that's a great question why don't we leave it to our resident expert to answer that come up to the mic and answer if you overpaid your property taxes are you referring into you didn't apply for an exemption I paid and it also came from out of my bank electronically I had a brain damage for a couple years you would have to actually take up with the tax office because we don't handle payments at the appraisal district so if you paid and then your bank paid then you would need to go talk to them about seeing how you could get refunded that double payment is that the tax assessor yes I'll be arresting great question and I'll take a moment to brag in my last legislative session I passed a bill that said if you overpaid the county has to pay you back that sounds logical right why do you need a law is there a time limit for that to protest those back taxes no you just have a right you can go down to your tax assessor take your documentation in your case and they are required to pay you back why there needed to be a law to make that happen is kind of silly but we actually had a lot of property owners come up and tell us about their experience of not getting paid back their overpayment so that is in law okay let's jump into the second argument and then we'll come back to more questions this is a really important argument to be able to make because this is where Bear County appraisal district is at this is their weaker ability they're pretty good at I think collecting a lot of sales information and estimating the market value of our homes where they're not very good is understanding the diversity of our homes and how homes differ from one another they might actually have a really good understanding of my house last year but over the course of 12 months things changed and they don't have that information and so it is in this argument where the home owner has a great opportunity to push back and challenge the assessed value of BCAD and you should know that BCAD and other appraisal districts have tried to take away this argument legislatively so our state rep who is still here and the senator and his staff who are still here they should know this do not allow appraisal districts to take away this argument of property owners of any type this is a really important argument and so this is how to make the argument number one let's stay here comparable criteria is important so find houses because this argument is basically you're assessing homes similar to mine but at a lower value give me that deal that's the essence of this argument treat me the same as similar homes that are being assessed lower and so you need some criteria you need some measure of what it means to be similar and so number one find houses in your neighborhood don't go across town because you know when you go a very long distance away that makes it hard to say that's a similar neighborhood similar property find homes that are about the same age so keep the range of how old your home is and the comparable homes within you know a few years five years of each other don't don't compare your house that was built in 2010 to a house that was built in 1970 to that size is important now there's a way to adjust for a house that is 2,000 square feet being compared to a house that is 2,100 square feet you can just take a per square foot measure but don't include in your set of comparables in your set of similar homes a house that is 2,000 square feet if your house is 2,000 square feet or don't look for a house that is 500 square feet you know you have to try to keep that bandwidth of size fairly narrow similar features in class of home Bear County identifies how many bedrooms how many bathrooms is there a second floor also they have a category called condition and this is where they try to get a sense of the quality of your home let's turn to the next slide and unless they've changed their classification system and our resident expert is here oh you don't deal with values okay well here is the classification system that Bear County has historically used and believe still does today you'll see these letters on your notification if there's an there's a category called condition under it if there's an S that means it's superior E is excellent there's V for very good G for good A for average F for fair L for low the way you should think about this is it's a ranking okay one level is higher than another it's hard to get a sense of how much greater it is and so the way you should think about it is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 it's a ranking 7 is not necessarily 7 times worse than 1 it's just a lot lower and it's certainly lower than 6 and so on and so forth and so what you want to be able to do is find homes that are in the same classification system as yours that are assessed lower and say you know treat me like those or you want to find properties that look just like yours physically are in the same condition but maybe they are classified as average and you're classified as very good if you can get a reclassification or if you can argue for reclassification that will go a long way of making the case that you're in the wrong category and being in the wrong category is driving up your assessed value does that make sense where is it at can you bring it forward okay if you're right it is not on here but it is on line and if you have to go online go to Bear County appraisal districts website click on property search under your address and it has a whole lot more information than is found here you're right and that's also where you find the size of your lot and this is the evidence packet that was sent and it has the classification system here you're right because I do mine electronically and so I look at the website instead of going by the notice and thank you for raising that so the website is really the ultimate source of finding how Bear County describes your home, the conditions, the number of bedrooms, the size of the land, all of that and the Bear County's BCADS website is an excellent way of finding comparable homes and I think you're right I think they should put that on the form here this is the evidence packet that was given to one of our colleagues here and it shows a list of properties BCADB believes are similar and it describes condition and in this example they're all classified as good give this back to you or else you're going to think I'm going to pay it for you so let's go to the next slide so this is by far the most important tool for us and thank you BCAD for keeping it up this is where you can find a whole lot of information about your house and what BCADB believes is the state of the house and where you can find the values and the quality conditions of your neighbor's homes it's an excellent way of getting a sense of whether BCADB is treating you equitably and so if you have not been here it's really a lot of fun I think it brings out the internal voyeur in all of us we get to take a peek inside of our neighbor's homes without being seen we do it virtually online and just plugging in their address and getting all of their information at one time they actually had drawings of homes and they stopped that because they thought that was a little bit too much information so thank you for keeping the information up let's go to the next slide and so here is an example when you enter the website it lets you choose how to search you can search by property address you can search by the owner's name if you have an account number on the property that's more particular but the easiest way to find similar homes is by address and so what you need to do step on get in your car or take the dog for a walk and go identify similar homes or homes maybe you have a suspicion that they're probably not being valued the same way collect those addresses come back home start plugging them into the website and then pull down their assessed value the conditions the size of the property how many bedrooms how many bathrooms and take all that information and let's go to the next slide this is more on the website let's keep on going here's an example so you plug in an address and it gives you in this case I think I plugged in the 1400 block of just this street and I pulled up everybody on that street let's go to the next one so then you take that information there and you build a table appraisers and BCAD themselves call this a grid and this is an important concept you have to try to make a table like this okay so what's inside this table well it's at the very top in bold the property in question so in this case it's the property in question is located on Lawn Cheney the living area is 1453 square feet the classification was F plus so that's fair and then BCAD adds a plus or a minus or they'll have it blank in this case it's F plus and the tax year is 2015 so I built this for somebody last year and then the first row down below is that property in question and all the information the classification fair and so let me read the column headings there's the address there's a classification the year built the living area improvement value which is the value of the house not the land any built structures then there's the land size in square feet then there's the land value BCAD breaks it out what they think the value of your home is versus the value of the land and then over here I made these values total value is just the sum of land and improvement value and then I take them one at a time I divide the land value by the square feet and so it's $2.06 for the property in question and then the living area value per square foot is $73.12 oh I think I said acres it's not acres it's square feet so I put everything in square feet so land value is $2.06 per square foot and living area is $73.12 per square foot and so that this is the home that is of the property taxpayer who asked me for help now everything that follows are the values and the conditions of her neighbors and so it's here you can see their addresses you can see that all of them are actually of the same classification you can see the year built all about in the same period the earliest one was built in 1965 the latest one was built in 1968 or 1969 I have all of their living area improvement value same information and then I go over here and what I see is their land value per square foot and then their living area per square foot and then I take the median the value I sort them and then I take the property in the middle so I don't take the average why? because averages if you have one property that is an anomaly that's really high it'll shift the average if you take the median that is rank all the values pick the one in the middle the median is a better description of the typical home that's similar to your home and so the median value is $68.38 hey I think we have an argument to make here right? if you have a question it sounds like you do have a question I heard a question mark in there because we're online we're broadcasting for the benefit of the viewers please don't be shy and so the median value is $68.38 per square foot well that's less than the 73 that this property owner is being charged and so and if you take the total which is the land per square foot plus the living area per square foot that's $86 versus 92 estimated value based on median ratio and so if this property owner who I helped was being assessed the way the typical house on her street was being assessed then her total value would be 125,000 not 134,000 and so she could legitimately say lower my assessed value to make it 125,000 and this is great evidence all on the same street all around the same age all around about the same size I think she did win her case so this is how to make the equity argument any questions on this where can you get that grid so it's an excel spreadsheet I will have y'all signed in with an email address everybody okay I can email you this template how's that is that good alright I'm happy to do that I will send you this example and then you can just take out the addresses and put the addresses you want and the formulas will already be there okay is that good on behalf of the twitter feed how do you contest land value property valuations ah yes so land is harder to contest but it's not impossible it's the same way the same method you would take here so in this example the property owner in question actually had land value that was valued less than her neighbors and so she didn't make she didn't try to challenge land now it wasn't like the land and it was so low that it made up for how high the improvement was because if you look at the total combined hers is higher than her neighbors and so I think it was still fair for her to make the argument on total but if I was living at one of these homes say at the address of 5621 Lon Cheney Drive $2.46 I would cherry pick the smaller values of $2.46 and anything below $2.46 and make the argument that I should be treated like those properties and so you have to just see what the data reveals okay but the methodology is exactly the same I will say it's there are less opportunities I believe to find discrepancies on land than there are to find discrepancies on the built structure why because land is land there's more diversity in the houses that we live in and I guess getting out to my question or one of my questions is I live in an old I guess elderly neighborhood most of the homeowners have over 65 exemption or disabled exemption the problem I find is there's no incentive to keep land properties valuations fair this year as a matter of fact I convinced two of my elderly neighbors to go with me to file a complaint and unfortunately when we walked there the person at the desk was like oh you know helping them fill it out showing him the ropes and I was like well it doesn't matter to you you have a cat it doesn't raise your taxes significantly and I'm like it matters to me your neighbor who doesn't share the cat and every year I go and fight my valuation and luckily for the past seven years I've become pretty close to what I think is fair but every year it's three or four days I've got to take off from work three or four days I've got to dedicate time at home and other things and it's old it's almost like they're not doing their job correctly if every year your house was valued at 100,000 and every year you brought it down to they're not evaluating the property correctly if six, seven years in a row that same valuation keeps being rejected and the correct value gets evaluated I know every year Groundhog Day is a new day but there's got to be some kind of value tied into what we've been wrong ten years in a row we've been wrong five years in a row so wonderful issue and let me tell you about a wall I passed in 2013 I passed a law that said if you challenge your praise value and you win the chief appraiser has to meet a higher standard to raise the property value of your home that law was intended to address the concern that you just made the problem is an implementation this law requires the appraisal review board committee that you stand in front of that committee is made up of our fellow citizens who volunteer to do this the law requires that they are aware of the new law that got passed in 2013 and that they hold the chief appraiser's office to that higher standard the chief appraiser after the law was passed locally did something really unique and that is was telling property owners that they would only settle if you sign a waiver waving away this right to hold them accountable following year yeah and they still doing that I don't know but that's a problem and it's hard to do anything about it because as legislators they and I'm no longer a legislator but my colleagues my former colleagues they only get together once every two years and so they can try to pass a law and that they think has teeth but our chief appraiser can figure out a loophole of getting around it and they don't reconvene for another two years so with that said I believe if you won your case last year you should be aware that House Bill 585 which passed in 2013 is the law of the land and in making your case you should tell the ARB members that you won last year and so they have to actually hold a higher standard against the chief appraiser to justify an increase on your home the chief appraiser has changed our forms I don't know if everybody notices under a new format and I took marketing in school and it just reeks of marketing of a way to get the focus shifted from the appraised value to the difference it makes to your bottom line so now it used to be your appraised value should be our priority of what we focus because that's where the taxing comes from and now the new format changes it to like oh don't worry your taxes only went up $40 a year and it doesn't shift the focus where it should be which is what is my property value that it's buried in the numbers so if you look at it what it presents mostly is hey your property taxes went down $80 but what you might not notice is your valuation went up $5,000 and it's kind of giving them less of a fight from people thinking I'm not going to go to a fight for $80 I'm not going to waste my time for $80 but you know they're going to boil us to death a little bit at a time that way and that new format just the moment I saw it I was like ah I know where this is coming from I will have to look at the source of that change because I don't want to you know to be fair to call balls and strikes the chief appraiser actually has to follow pretty rigid standards of what the notification looks like that surprised me that that change came from the legislature the whole legislature it's not just one person and because the legislature has historically tried to improve the notification and to get people to focus on what they believe are the right things and so they might have thought people need to be aware about how their taxes are changing they might have changed the format it might not have been the chief appraiser okay take care of my concerns for now okay thank you let's go to the next slide so the informal hearing with BCAD and I actually think BCAD was a leader in creating the informal hearing now it's a standard but at one time the law was that there was just a hearing you go down and you sit in front of the appraisal review board and you make your case BCAD created this informal process and then it became the standard across Texas and this is a I think a good idea and that is try to work out your differences with the chief appraiser before hand if you don't agree then that's fine you don't have to you still have your sort of day in court which is going in front of the appraiser review board for your formal hearing but there is this step in the process and it can be very useful like for example they could just simply have measured the size of your lot improperly and that should be straightforward you shouldn't have to like make a long argument in front of a three judge panel you should just be able to make this technical correction and the informal process is really good for that so be sure to arrive prepared with having done your homework present your case in an organized way you might be able to settle but you don't have to if you believe that the representative of the chief appraiser's office isn't offering you a reduction that is fair then don't take it but what it allows you to do is understand better where they're coming from and take that information with you when you go for your formal hearing you have a question this question is for senator Menendez and he's right outside the door thank you okay so my question is basically we know how important a child's education is and when you look at property taxes 50% goes to the school district this is the most segregated city in the country and when you look at our inequality gaps across the country I believe this is an inherent unequal system to getting funding for our public schools we need to get away from this system of funding schools through property taxes good statement I agree with you today though we're here to try to see what we brought them an expert in something on how people can help stay in their homes and get a fair assessment or value on their homes I think every one of us understand that it's through the property tax state of Texas in my opinion is a little regressive and antiquated and how it funds its things other states that have a more balanced approach to how they do funding have lower property taxes and so you can talk to their executives when AT&T was revolving people through here people would come in they go well when I lived in a state that had let's say and this will not happen in Texas because Governor Bullock after he tried to pass the state income tax the next session he introduced a constitutional tool to prevent a state constitutional income tax and so that won't you won't see that unfortunately because that would be really the fairest most equitable way to provide for the state of Texas so while I agree with you unfortunately that I don't see what we can do about that right here and I'd be happy to have you meet with you any time anywhere anybody that's in here for those of you who aren't here when we started this our office is in Wonderland Mall Monday through Friday we open Saturdays I think we're the only government office that's open Saturdays from 11 to 2 and so if you can't make it during the week come and visit us and you don't need an appointment you can drop in anytime but what I do want to do is because the school needs to have this room back at a certain time I want to get Mike back the floor so that he can answer y'all's questions about this and we can finish the go through his PowerPoint and last thing I'm going to say I'm going to ask now cast if they allow us to we will have the replay of this available both obviously on the website but also I want to see if we can do it on our website and we'll put Mike's PowerPoint slide up on our website as well so that everybody can have you don't have to feel like you're taking notes you can just listen thank you all very much very good question big question big issue boy I wish we could solve it right here but it's a tough one and let's go to the next question I live at 106 Haverhill and good morning Esther morning the issue I have is when you have bad neighbors big time my in-laws live where I live now for 22 years and they passed away and we put the house up for sale and for three years it was on the market nobody was looking at it when they moved in there used to be a church across the street nice and peaceful but then about seven years ago they moved out and this adult daycare center for a mentally challenged people moved in and my in-laws they passed away and and they really didn't pay attention I mean they were happy to wake up in the mornings you know but we finally got tired of waiting for it to sell so my husband and I we got our money together and we bought the house and but we were aware of that business it's a business in a residential area completely surrounded by homes but then we saw the amount of traffic that's going on we're talking about 35 I'm sorry no if I think you raised a really good point and I bet you BCAD doesn't understand the dynamics of your block and how it has changed and so this is a great opportunity to take pictures document and include that in your argument of market conditions and also equity because if they are comparing your value of your house to homes on different blocks and streets that don't have that kind of business operating then you can argue that you're not similar to those homes and you need to be treated differently so I think that's that is fair game important evidence 30 odd employees and 40 odd clients and the traffic via trans comes in star shuttle, meaty bands that are transporting the client and then the patients clients whatever they get out and start walking the neighborhood you know so it's really bad I got into my house so it's like whoa wait a minute time out. Well we better take all these questions because the longer we stay here they may be back in the house. It used to be where the neighborhood resource center used to be so it's crazy it's just crazy so well I think on the weekends it's beautiful because nobody's there. Well in close I think they're your case is a great example of BCAD doesn't understand the complexities and dynamics of every block it's your job and your opportunity to educate them on that. I'm going to educate you. You are. Alright it's great to see you this morning one more question then we're going to go to the next slide mainly a commentary and then my question more of a suggestion the second time is a partisan thing but since Mr. Calvert was up there mentioning Republicans and then he said something about when the Republicans mess around with your taxes that you don't feel it in your pocketbook but when Democrats do to reiterate you feel it in your pocketbook. Okay. So that's who's running our county so just to make that point clear. Okay. Alright number two I've lived in my house for 40 years I live all by the Jefferson area actually south of Baconi Heights. Okay. And we live there 40 years we take care of our home but when I started challenging our property appraisals and assessments or whatever they call it I noticed that they would tell me take pictures of the back parts of your house and that way we can reappraise your house and I've always contended I've told this to my wife and I mentioned this to other people that if people can't afford to take care of their homes and that's okay you know their finances or whatever but they should be incentives for people that do take care of their homes in the last two years we've invested almost $25,000 in our home we remodel our kitchen we did all our wood floors and the whole works now it's gone up they don't know that we did this but they can justify it as they know. Okay. Put your fingers in your ears. So what I'm saying is that there should be a system that when you do maintain your home that you can be able to take your receipts to the appraiser and say this is how much money invested the last 12 months and they should be deducted a certain percentage off the tax property because I love it because because what the system works that's what we have people not taking care of their homes because word gets out and then the whole city is a dump the way it is and I don't care where you drive you can drive in Montevista you can drive on the west side wherever that's the word out you don't take every home you don't pay that much tax you take every home you pay a lot of tax. I feel for you I really do it does feel like we're being punished when we keep up our property and I've always thought that we should have an incentive and to reward us for maintaining our neighborhoods. The only thing that I'll say about this is that it's difficult because we also want to have a tax system that allows us to pay for our schools and our garbage collection and police and fire and basic infrastructure and it has to be based on something and the way we base it on is the market value of your home. If we were to go to that system and I feel your pain believe me because we've been improving my house also but if we were to do that I could imagine the point where you basically if you live in a really nice house you don't pay any taxes like everybody else does. That's one system and I'm not here to debate that I'm just here to give advice on how to be as empowered to make a difference in reducing your assessed value under the current system. I think that's an excellent point what often happens is the value increase is much larger than what you actually improved your house by but that is an excellent evidence to be able to take down when you do have your hearing to say yes improvements were made but only this much and here's my invoice for the changes that were made or here are my receipts for the changes that were made. Let's turn to the next slide. So here's a quick summary. You know your home and your neighborhood better than anybody BCAD does not have the level of intelligence that you have on your particular property and so that's why participating in this protest process is really important and why 70% of the people who do challenge their assessment win a reduction in their assessment. Be firm on your issues don't be intimidated don't settle during the informal if you honestly believe that the value of your home is a certain amount and they're not coming down to meet you then don't settle. Take your case to the praise or review board and the odds are that you'll get a better hearing at the formal hearing than in the informal hearing. If you could come to the microphone because there are folks that are listening online Oh and there's a line. What happened? I'm sorry. She's cutting a line. They don't agree with you and you go to a next step or... Okay. Let me answer this really quickly. So if you go to the appraisal review board and you make your case and the ARB does not agree with you then you actually have one more opportunity, a few more options. You can enter into an arbitrary process in front of a third party arbitrator who hears both sides and then decides or you can go to court and going to court is very expensive and so most homeowners don't do that but those that feel like they are not being treated fairly, they can't afford to go to court but they can afford... What is the fee for an arbitrator? $500. So after your hearing, yes I have a slide for this. Excellent. So you can appeal to through binding arbitration and it's a $500 fee and this is for properties that are $1 million or less. So if you're below a million dollars then you can access this. So if you're living in a really nice house you can't go to binding arbitration, you have to go to court. But for the rest of us you can go to binding arbitration. I can't even pay those $500. I know it is expensive. Now who can do that? Well, here's a question. Now if you win in binding arbitration you don't have to pay the fee. Yeah, I believe your fee is returned to you if you win in binding arbitration. And that is something that we should nail down and when I email you the template I'll email you an answer to that specific piece of information as well. Okay. So be polite, be organized, don't lose your temper. That just harms your ability to make a persuasive argument. I believe that if you can go in the spirit of trying to understand the other side in the end you're understood more effectively and that is always a good approach. So for example help me understand how you got to this value. Well, here are the comparables and oh these are the homes you picked well, this one is on a street that is really nice, not like my street what happens when we kick that property out? Oh, it shifts the value down. So if you can be in that kind of conversation where you're seeking to understand and you're equipped with what you believe are the right comparables, I think ultimately you'll be in that category of 70% who realize reduction in their property. Let's turn, oh we got 30 more minutes. Okay, let's work through these questions and if you can flip to the next slide. A website, let's go to the useful websites. Yes, sir. So I'm here today to really just share information that proposes that your market values aren't necessarily all through analysis through technical studies. It's also done through city council and your mayor to manipulate your market values and this is how. So in 2014 your city council and your mayor voted for the city planning office to annex certain areas outside of San Antonio, but here's where the kicker is. So this process is to annex areas outside of San Antonio through 2015 through 2017. So what happens is to manipulate the markets, you usually hear your councilman say, oh vote for us because we didn't raise your right. You don't have a question, do you? Get to your question. Okay, sure. This is not your platform, I'm sorry. So the city has annexed I-10 past Fiesta of Texas and 281 North in Evans where homes are 400,000 plus. Okay. So they're able to take those market values of those expensive homes into your account to make the average home 180,000, but would the home in San Antonio really be an 80,000 average if we didn't annex those super expensive homes? Well, that's a good question and I actually think there I think what you should know is that value is not done on a county-wide basis alone. Certainly all properties within the city of San Antonio and neighborhoods that are being annexed are considered, but if BCAD looks at anything large, it's the whole county. It's not just the city of San Antonio, it's the whole county. So those properties were already included in the county. More importantly, BCAD does go a step further and it drills down to your neighborhood market area and it actually has a system of coding every sub market. And so whether you live on the south side near Collins Garden, their analysis is just going to be limited to Collins Garden. It's not going to be deeply informed by whether the city annexes something north of Stone Oak. It just isn't. But land values to help you answer your question. Land values are usually appraised higher when there's an economic development in the area. By annexing these areas, there's more areas, 151, 6104 and part of the east side. We'll forcefully bring in 117,000 more people into the city. Now we've manipulated the city to have more population, have more increased homes. Thus, that is the economic development that can factor into your land value increasing. No, you're right. Everything that the city does to improve jobs and grow its structure and grow its economy puts pressure on our homes. Let's take the next question. I appreciate your concern. Annexation is a part of the bigger picture of public policy and real estate development. But in terms of your value when you're personally making your case focus on your neighborhood area. Focus on comparables in your neighborhood area. Because ultimately that is how Bear County estimates and guesses at the value of your house. The NAR, the National Association of Realtors, said our properties have increased in value. About 3.5%. Yet the BCAD this year, the main increases 7%. Over the last three years, it's been over 25%. My question is, does the chief tax collector, assessor sit on the BCAD board? The chief appraiser is not a member of the BCAD board. The BCAD board is an appointed set of citizens who are appointed by the property taxing entities. Bear County, City of San Antonio, the flood district has a say, school districts have a say. The council certainly has a chance to appoint somebody. And so it's that governing board that hires chief appraiser and sets general policy. Chief appraiser absolutely has a big hand in running the office. He's the head of it. Who hires and advises the chief appraiser? The governing board that's appointed by our local government entities. So the people we're voting for and sitting on the city council are increasing our taxes, right? So absolutely. The city council has control over our local property tax system. The county government does why? Because they set the tax rate. Ultimately that's what drives our tax bill. Now the appraisal process should be our best system for estimating the market value of our homes. And we should challenge it if it's out of line with what we believe the proper assessment of our houses. If you don't want to pay more taxes, certainly pay attention to the value of your house because that's what's going to be taxed. But also when the city council sets its budget, they have to set a tax rate. And there's a whole separate hearing process. If you don't believe city council is spending your dollars correctly, you should get involved in that process. But there's no conspiracy here. Yes, local governments set the property tax rate. But what we're here to talk about is the proper valuing of houses and our property and how us citizens have a big role in that process on our particular homes. Yes ma'am. First question. I've gone through the formal hearing process several times. They make you feel very intimidated. I'm an educated person. The minute you walk in the door, I have been approached by a police officer like I'm threatening. And I don't think I love very threatening. It is a very threatening atmosphere. I have been through the process many times. Many times. You cannot win. You are at their... I mean they will win. You cannot win. I've been through it many, many times. What percentage... How often have you been able to get your assessed value lowered? Twice? Maybe by a couple of thousand dollars. My first question is, can you make the slide go down a little bit? I want to know what percentage of the people that appeal through binding arbitration what percentage of the common folk here win? I don't know an answer to that. I will ask a question. I'll find out. That's a really good question. Last year. First let me say, I don't live in the city. I live in the county. Which means I have no representation. I hear mayor, city council, so on, so on. You all don't represent me. I have no representation. One year. One year. Twenty thousand dollars. Twenty thousand dollars. It's gone up. My house has not worked twenty thousand dollars more than it was worth last year. Plus, because I live in the county, I live off 1604. We're not in next yet. I have my fingers crossed we don't. If you see the building out there, there's a brand new HEB there off 151. Every time we turn around there's more building, more people, more stress on everything we have out there. But again, they are going to raise my taxes constantly, constantly, constantly. And I have no say so about it. Because I have fought it. And maybe they'll inch it down a thousand dollars, but that's about it. I've lived in my home 23 years. There's only so much you can do. And again, I feel like I have no representation whatsoever. You do have representation in the form of county government because you're in Bear County. But they are the employees. The other important thing to recognize, because you live in the county and you don't have a mayor or a city council, you're paying on average about 22% less than somebody in a similar home inside of the city boundaries. So you've hit the point that you don't have representation. No, that was a choice. And the upside is that your tax bill is about 22% less than it would be if you were outside of the city boundaries. But again, it sounds like we are being... Now, the HEB that's coming and all the development that's happening in your area, yes, that is having an effect on the value of land in your area. And that is going to have a consequence on a greater assessment. Right. How do you get away from that? I suppose it would be moving further away from development. And again, there is no way on earth that my home is worth... But it's very hard to... But what you can do if you don't want to do that, and I'm not advising you to do that, is try to make sure that their assessment is not out of line with what is really happening with homes. But they can manipulate it. They manipulate the system. And again, there is no way on earth that any reasonable person could say that my home is worth $20,000 more than it was last year. Well, it sounds like you have a great market value argument to make. Hello. You and I live in the same neighborhood. Oh. I'm Tom Hogue. Yep. Good to see you. So you might be looking at my property to make yours lower. Yes, I might be. I've lived there since 1957. Awesome. So I'm a long time and my family has been there since 1935. Wow. So the question is about fair market value. So you have people maybe like yourself, maybe other people, where the houses have turned around two or three different times. And each time they've made improvements and everything else. Yep. So now they're comparing by sale price my property. So what's my recourse for that? I think your best... I don't know enough about your own individual case. But I believe in our neighborhood the opportunity for most homeowners is to make an argument on equal and uniform. And identify those properties that are selling for the greater value and find distinctions between them and your property. Our neighborhood is so eclectic. You have many examples of million dollar homes right next to homes that are very modest, you know, priced under the average value, Bear County wide. And so it's very challenging for BCAD to appreciate that kind of diversity. But it creates an opportunity for homeowners like us to go in and explain how our situation is not uniform across the neighborhood and how we are different than what's happening with these houses that are being flipped. Yeah. And what about the commercial coming into the residential? So one other thing about the one who approves land and changing of buildings and things like that. Zoning commission? Zoning maybe? Yeah. Development services. So they've allowed people to come in and build things that aren't within guidelines. So like for instance, if you turn a house into apartment, it's supposed to have 1.5 off street parking units. And for every property or unit, so they're not enforcing these rules. So how do I have recourse to use that as a tool? Because I don't get any relief. You know, I go and I tell them and they change the value but it doesn't change my increase of 10%. Yeah. Well, you know what I'm saying? I do. So they go up $70,000 and they say, okay, we'll only go up $50,000 but it doesn't change the 10% increase that I'm going to have to encourage. You're still going to have to experience that 10% punch. I understand. Well, I do believe that the parking issue and other dynamics in the neighborhood should be documented and be a part of your case. For example, I live right across the street from Bracken Ridge High School and basically our corner is parking lot for parents to drop off and pick up. Mine is Bay Tobin and everything else is the teacher's council and the apartment complex is next door. Bear County Appraisal District takes an average kind of understanding of the market in our part of the neighborhood. They don't drill down all the way to, oh, well you live on this particular corner and people who live there are going to experience these kinds of issues that others that are deeper into the neighborhood don't have that they don't have that understanding and so for property owners like us documenting that, taking photos I took photos of crime that happened. There was a fight at the corner of my property and my wife thought I was crazy but I went out with my smartphone and just snapped some photos because I thought, well I can include it in my file when I go to protest my assess value because there is a lot of traffic on the street and sometimes and the crime stats actually just back it up that we experience more of this kind of activity where I'm at than in other parts of the neighborhood. And this is a big picture question. I think homeowners like myself that have lived there treating diversity while other people move in that there should be some kind of just like rent protection like they do in California. Some kind of protection from the increase because we're having a thousand people move into San Antonio a week and so when they're selling a million dollar home in California and coming to San Antonio and finding a $300,000 home that's no big deal to them. I appreciate that. It has had me really rethink the 10% cap for homeowners. Maybe it should be 5%. Oh you're saying 4. Well maybe it should be oh I see 0. Do I have a negative number? Come on. Now whatever it is, I think it's there, we need to rethink. Is 10% really doable under the dynamics that are happening. In some neighborhoods it is very painful and it's causing long time residents to be pushed out. I live in not quite as elite but I live in Beacon Hill and it is changing fast. Madeleine you're elite in my book. Thank you for coming. At 75 there really is very little monetary difference in my taxes. But I have a son who's going to inherit my home. I'm not going to live forever. And he's not going to be able to afford to stay in my home and that's wrong. That is really wrong. I am not able to afford to do everything that needs to be done in my house. I need a foundation. I need it to be painted. I can't afford that. A couple years ago I put on a new roof. I'm paying for that. When I finish paying for that I'll do something else. The price that they're putting on the home part of the problem is right next door to the house that's just been renovated. They buy them and they buy them cheap. Every day almost I get a thing. I'll buy your house. I'll buy your house. And then they sell it. They rehab them and unfortunately the majority of homes that are being rehabbed when they're not being rehabbed by the owners, the future owners it's junk. It's real junk. The house next door when we had the rain they just rehabbed this house and they were up there fixing the roof and leaks. Some families are going to buy that house and pay an outrageous amount for it. We've got to figure out something. Not just our generation but for the next generation. I have a son who isn't wealthy. He's not even middle class. He just barely makes a living. He's going to lose the house when I die. That's wrong. Thank you. You bring up a very important point and I think this is the frustration that we all feel because our property, our tax system should take into consideration on some level the ability to pay. Especially our home. Our home isn't, is not something that we want to flip. It's something we want to live in for as long as possible and we want to pass down to our children. It's something different. There should be some level of consideration on ability to pay. Right now the way the system is structured where we have no income tax. We're relying on our properties. Things keep on getting expensive and the market gets improved. That has effects on our property and it just keeps on going up and up and rising above our ability to manage the property tax bill. I think there needs to be a change. Most states have a balanced system. They have a moderate property tax. They have a moderate income tax and they have a sales tax. We don't have that third leg of the stool and so we rely heavily on property taxes and it results in a lot of pain to the average taxpayer. Now I have two questions. First I had one. Good morning June. I'm a June caustic. Mike is there anything you could recommend for a balanced system in Texas since it's highly unlikely we'll get an income tax? The only alternative is that we end up really harming our remaining, gutting our property tax system which means that we're going to see an even lower investment in public services like education. I don't think that's a good choice. That's my opinion. Now I know we're getting into politics and away from the nuts and bolts of how to balance your property taxes but I think that's not a good alternative. I think we need to, in my practice when I was in Austin was to try to make small improvements tinkering with the existing property tax system because I wanted to preserve it but I wanted to be more user friendly for the average property taxpayer and so I think maybe another tinker might be this 5% cap so that property assessed values can't rise or the taxable value can't rise to 10% for 10 years or more consecutively that ceiling needs to be lower. I don't know but I think ultimately if you want a tax system to better reflect a taxpayer's ability to pay what that describes is a tax system that somehow takes into consideration income and there's no way around it. I remember having a conversation with a legislator saying well what we need is a tax system that takes into consideration ability to pay and he said yes you're absolutely right and I said jean that's an income tax. He's like oh no I can't do that so there's no way around it. We need to figure out how to take into account income I get to say these things because I'm not in the legislature anymore. Okay now I have a personal question. Our host is trying to give me the hook here. I live on a property which is divided into two lots. The first lot is where my home is and then sloping down and slopes down into a tributary or a creekway. Well this year when I pay my tax bill I pay two bills for the house and then for the area along the creek and the tax bill this year for the area along the creek has increased tremendously and I'm wondering if that could be related to the fact that they are making improvements along the creek. Yes I suspect so. I think that's a very good educated guess. I don't know for certain but I think the pattern is when, especially this kind of amenity because it's not just infrastructure it's also they're making it aesthetically pleasing and they're making it more like a linear park. Is that right? Well yes they're shoring up the sides of the creek so they're not eroding but this is private property all along the creek. I think you're probably onto something there June but I don't know for certain. All right thank you. And we'll make the next three questions the last questions because I know everybody needs to sort of move on with their day. Good to see you again Mike. I'm Jim Smith. Great to see you. I personally just want to thank you Tommy, Jose and Diego for doing this today. And can't forget the staffs. I was going to say the staffs are going to have a lot of follow-up after this. Like I said I appreciate that. That's true leadership this is what we all vote for. I'm very very impressed at this forum. I haven't been to it in the past. Not so much a question but I thank you and I know sometimes don't kill the messenger he's trying to help us. Mike is and I do have a question though Bear County might better assess this. I go every year same arguments like you know exactly what you're doing. I picked up a lot of good things here today but who gets a better bang for their buck? The people that send someone there to go represent them, these companies or the individuals like us? That's a great question. I don't think anybody has studied that but so I don't want to venture a guess. My understanding though and BKAD can tell me if I'm wrong but there's a suspicion that if you're being represented by somebody else, a professional let's call them, they will direct you to a certain appraisal review board panel. It's maybe going to be a little bit harder to persuade. If you're representing yourself, you go to a different group. You have no idea. That could be not true but that is like the rumor mill in those that go down there. Please come to the mic. If you could speak into the mic. I sent a professional. Get closer. They didn't do a bit of good. The chief appraiser told him to tell me that that business place was always full of people and that's why my taxes were going up. What was the name of the company? Prime One. And you know what? It takes a lot of money and a lot of tackles to pay $6,000. Yes. Well thank you for sharing your experience. I think it depends especially if you hire the wrong professional apparently. I believe in doing it myself because I think speaking for yourself, there's nothing more persuasive than that. You know so much more details as long as you have the same tools as the professionals and understand how to organize your argument. And this is not rocket science. You can do this. You can build that table. I will email you everybody here at the template. I think you can make just as powerful an argument as anybody else. A little bit of a narrative. I would tell everybody in here exactly what Mike is saying. Be prepared for what they're going to present to you. The Bear County appraiser are not necessarily the three committee members. Sometimes they'll say some silly things like a new utility poll. I had one and they added another one. He says well that's just like adding another tree in your backyard. Get prepared for some of those silly statements. They want to win their argument too. Okay. Be prepared. Do your homework. Do the light property. Exactly what Mike's doing but like I said once again I thank you guys so much. This was huge today. Appreciate you coming down. Okay we have two more questions and then. Hi my name is Kathy and I bought a house in Alta Vista. I'm not an investor. I take care of my 87 year old aunt. My mother who's 72 and my disabled sister. But I wanted my own home. So I bought a home off of a flipper. Who said he had a new foundation and a new roof. Which it didn't have but I'm my father's daughter. I climbed underneath. I took photos. I got the price to where it should have been but I had to do a lot of renovation. The house is still not complete inside but everything's gone up for me $90,000. Wow. And so I'm going to go fight for the first time. And I do want the template and I do want to know how to do it. Because I also do pay the taxes for my elderly aunt to stay in her home. Which is in Tobin Hill close to Pearl. And they're set but if they hadn't, Bear County came last year with two black suburban on the street, East French. They unloaded with people with clipboards and linears and they started walking the whole street. Had my aunt not been in her house over her American flag with her coffee. I think you know they would have appraised it way higher. And it just floored me. As soon as I painted the house Bear County and I was on a ladder and I'm in work clothes now because I do the work myself. But it's very hard. So anything you can do and I thank everybody for being here that senators, councilmen and you. I know you used to live in the neighborhood I don't know if you still do. But it was the ugliest house on the street. We had homeless, defecating in the yard. We had needles throwing over the fence. And I just want to know how to be able to live in the house once I'm done. Well I think with the information you received today and I will also email you the template and documenting the condition of your home and the repairs still need to be made. You'll be able to make a powerful argument for yourself. The home that your elderly aunt lives in near the pearl, that is challenging because the pearl has been transformational in that neighborhood area. They come out from the door and they see her sitting there with her coffee. They don't know that I'm there because I care give for her and I don't get paid to do it. It's a promise and I'm doing it. But they stopped and on all of the streets on French they got these huge posted stickums that says hi my name's Rick. I want to buy your house on everyone's car on their front door and they've actually tried to talk to her. And I come out and tell them to move along. Last question. Yes my name is Ken Respondek. I'm a realtor and I've had some real bad problems down there at the appraisal district and I had the same problem that this lady had back here where they act like they've been threatened and then they called in the deputy sheriff and the deputy sheriff comes in the room and right away you know you're sitting there you know what am I going to be handcuffed and taken out of this room and not finish my protest. So I get feeling that they don't want me to protest when they bring this deputy sheriff in which then I go into default and I lose it. So I'm thinking you know why why did they call this deputy sheriff in because the chairman of that panel those three guys the ARB guys didn't explain to me why one of the guys picked up and walked out the door and I said where's this guy going. He said just sit there he told me just sit there and I said well if he's going to the restroom I'm going to go to the restroom. You just sit there. So when he comes back he brings in this deputy sheriff guy and he's sitting there and he's overpowering overlooking me and like well maybe I better just keep my mouth shut and just go up just take whatever roll over on my back and just take whatever you're going to give me from the price of the property. So somebody's telling these people to do this stuff and to bring these guys in to intimidate the taxpayer so that way calm them down and not try to get the value of what they're trying to shoot for. Thank you for sharing that story and I appreciate you bringing this up. Well there's another thing too. Because that the protest process again I think we should rename it. It should be something else that's more inviting and it should be considered an opportunity to better get at the truth. And not be this intimidation business. Well Mike let me tell you I walked out of there and I said you know why did this guy bring this guy in there? And I started thinking well maybe this guy's got a personality problem. Maybe he's you know I was looking on the internet trying to figure out what made him do this. And then I went to where it's called paranoid personality disorder. And if you go to Wikipedia and you read that it talks about the person that's always in fear of something and that needs security because he sees things that's going to harm him. And that's what I was thinking these ARB guys you know there's about 50 of them that they've got at the Fraser District. And when I talked to Mr. Brown, Gary Brown Billy Eisenman he says that well they could just look at you and if they see your eyes and your face features they right away can figure that you're a threat to them. You think you're being profiled? Yeah. Maybe you are. And that's not fair. I mean that's not the way to treat the taxpayer because the taxpayer is the customer. Agree. Is a customer to the city or to the state of Texas. We pay money for services and we should be treated like a customer. Well one thing that you can do and in the bill that I passed before I left the Legislature Hospital 585 we created a requirement to survey our customers and BCAD is required to keep a to take this survey and make sure that everybody that comes in shares what their experience was like during the process. Well you know one. I know it sounds little but you know that is a part of the process and cameras don't lie but also filling out this form I think is the systematic way of us to identify you know hot spots and problem areas. Well Mike here's the other thing that I found and I advise everybody in this room to get on the internet and get a copy of the Appraisal Review Board manual. It's 2016 and it tells everything that those guys are supposed to follow. Which is the law that stood the legislators that passed in Austin and they have to follow that stuff. What I've learned and over the years I've been protesting almost 20-something years. You know I go in there and I protest and they don't like I guess I'm considered on the blacklist with the Appraisal District as a habitual complainer and I don't know if they got that on the computer but every time I go in there to register to do my protest the girl behind that behind that computer I see a different face feature and then when that girl gives that paperwork to the ARB guy I see the ARB guy has a different face so I know they got something on the computer saying that you're a habitual complainer and so they're prepared to handle me in that room. The other thing is I found out and I didn't know this is that the Appraisal District controls the ARB and what they do is they do all the administration work for the ARB. They set up, they bank roll the ARB, they set up the scheduling they set up the administration for the ARB but they can't tell the ARB how to run what's inside that little office when you make your protest. They can't tell them to do that. And as ARB guys you don't even know who you're getting when you go in those people. When you go to a jury trial at least the lawyers can go in there and interview the jurors to see if we want you on the panel for a jury. They should do that here by taking some of the people and say give us your background of the ARB. This is the guy I want to use on my panel. This guy and this guy. We don't have that choice. So we don't know who we're getting when we do these ARB guys. Thank you for sharing that and let's make that the last comment and let me respond. You're absolutely right there needs to be greater distance between the ARB members who are ultimately the judge in the jury and the chief appraiser. Here are some things that we did over the last 10 years and Jose supported these changes. Number one we took the education and training of the ARB members out of the hands of the chief appraisers and put that in the hands of the comptroller a way creating distance. Number two a recent change we made is that the chief appraiser and the governing board of BCAD are not allowed to appoint and nominate or influence the selection process of who is in the ARB. We actually move that to an administrative judge locally. These aren't perfect solutions but every legislative session we've tried to create more distance and I think we still have more work to do it sounds like Jose. And finally on your suggestion of picking the jury that ultimately you can do that it'll make the process very expensive and in fact we have that in place already and it's called going to court. And that's why it's expensive and so we've actually created this alternative administrative process to be court light so that we can process thousands of cases every year and in a timely fashion low cost and so the more we add those elements that you just described that can be found in court to this process just know it's going to take more time. It's going to be more expensive and it may not get us the results that we want and so I appreciate this is the close. I will hang around and you can talk to me some more okay but no we really have to end to go to court okay this was it but I will take that as a critique of this process and try to improve it next time. Thank you for your time and I appreciate being with you this morning. Let's give Mike a big round of applause Mike up. Mike came on his own taking time away from his lovely wife and their two children to be with us today to do this because of his love for our community. Now the Bear County Appraisal District they sent one of their supervisors and the gentlemen Mr. Rogelio Sandoval is standing right there and he's got a table and he has one of his staff members and you're welcome to meet with him and talk to him about what's going on. Now those of you who want to receive a copy of Mike's presentation we need to have your email so if you have not signed in and gotten your email in please let us know. We have handed out evaluation forms because obviously it sounds like what I heard right here at the end was what can we do to actually help you prepare for the actual face-to-face ARB. We will work on that as well. This is our first time to do this. Very first time ever. We feel like it was great. Thank you but we feel thank you to thanks to Mike and his expertise that this thing was really as good as it was and thanks to your presence. We had over a hundred people come and go today throughout the day and there's a lot more work to do. One of the things that I I took from today that I think we can introduce as potentially as a bill is looking you mentioned it cameras don't lie so if we've got cameras in police cars we could possibly have a camera in that room so that people can hear and record what's actually being said and that protects everybody. That protects the consumer, protects them. There's no more he said she said it is going to be the facts of the facts. So if there's a dispute the video will be there to let everybody know what happened. So thank you all very much. Remember now cast San Antonio dot com the nonprofit organization that came here on their own. If you get a chance go look them up on their website see if there's some way you can pitch in to help them. We're going to pitch in. There still should be some coffee and some pastries in the back of the room. If you want to know more information we're going to be the replay of this video of this whole thing today. We have tweeted it. We have put it on our Facebook page. We're putting it on our website. We plan to have the whole thing the replay on the website and also Mike's PowerPoint presentation just in the event that you want to tell someone about it where they can go find it. So thank you all very much. A big thanks to the San Antonio Independent School District. I want to thank them for this right here is your tax dollars making them available to us on a Saturday so that we don't have to go spend money good use of public facilities so that we can inform the community. Thank you all very much. We look forward to seeing you at the next time. We're probably going to start trying to do this on an annual basis. Thank you all very much.