Commissioners remain divided over wisdom, cost of hiring a contractor for next revaluation
Less than a decade after he wowed the county’s leaders with a successful in-house revaluation, the head of Alamance County’s tax office has announced that he’d like to outsource this state-mandated readjustment of tax values to a private contractor.
Alamance County’s tax administrator Jeremy Akins appeared the county’s board of commissioners last Monday to lay out his intention for a fully-contracted reval using a firm that had helped his staff complete their latest mass reassessment in 2023.
The loss of the county’s seniormost commercial appraiser had initially convinced Akins to retain the services of Vincent Valuations during the lead the up to last year’s revaluation. Last week, however, Akins told the commissioners that his subsequent experience has persuaded him this Bertie County concern should handle the entirety of Alamance County’s next reval in 2027.
“Our office has worked closely with Vincent over the past few years,” Akins added during last Monday’s appearance, “We’re very happy with the services we have received, and we would like to expand these services to fully outsource our 2027 revaluation.”
Akins’ announcement last week came as something of a departure from his tone when he first took over the county’s tax office roughly a decade ago. At the time, the county was still smarting from an out-of-house reval in 2009, which cost substantially more than anticipated and resulted in an unprecedented number of appeals from area property owners.
The fallout from that mass reassessment, which occurred while the housing market was in free fall, also included the departure of the then tax administrator who, it had emerged, was moonlighting for the company she had hired to handle the reval.
Akins had initially endeared himself to the county’s elected leaders by pledging to use the tax office’s own staff to conduct the county’s next revaluation in 2017. He went on to complete that particular reval at a considerably reduced cost – and with far fewer appeals than the county had seen in 2009.
During last week’s presentation, Akins acknowledged that he relied largely on the county’s own staff to eke out cut-rate revals in both 2017 and 2023. He nevertheless conceded that the success of these two mass reappraisals may have ultimately owed more to good fortune than anything else.
“I found ways to pinch pennies and cut costs,” he added, “and we got away with that twice. But I don’t recommend trying it a third time.”
Akins added that the limits of his own in-house appraisers were recently thrown into high relieve by questions that emerged last summer about the reval’s assessments of several big box retailers. The commissioners ultimately retained another contractor to review 10 of these appraisals – three of which were found to be significantly wide of the contractor’s values.
Akins frankly attributed these three, inaccurate assessments to the shortcomings of the tax office’s own staff.
“To be clear,” he went on to assert during last week’s presentation, “the three properties that were part of the problem were not in Vincent’s part of the equation.”
The tax administrator’s assurances on this score were enough to tip the scales with Steve Carter, the vice chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners.
“This will hopefully deal with the question about commercial revaluations,” Carter said of the plan to farm out the next reval to Vincent.
The tax administrator’s plan proved a much harder sell with other members of the county’s s governing board.
Particularly skeptical of the proposal was commissioner Pam Thompson, who found herself hard pressed to accept the $2.6 million that Akins predicted Vincent would charge to take over the next reval.
“I’m not swayed on that amount of money,” Thompson told the rest of the board.
“Whew,” agreed commissioner Craig Turner. “Why would we do that?!”
In contrast to this “ballpark” estimate, Akins acknowledged that the county had spent a comparatively modest $1,334,719 on the revaluation it wrapped up in 2023. More than half of this sum came from the tax office’s own in-house costs, while Vincent’s services – which included assistance with commercial appraisals as well as the company’s extensive support with revaluation appeals – had been capped at a maximum of $662,500.
Akins nevertheless assured the commissioners that Vincent’s estimated fees for 2027 are not out of line with what he would expect to pay for high-caliber appraisal services. He recalled that, when adjusted for inflation, the county spent roughly $2.7 million and $2.4 million for the revals it completed in 2001 and 2009. He added that the $2.6 million he projects for 2027 would be a relative bargain considering that it reflects a 20 percent discount that Vincent has offered the county.
Akins conceded that he could spend roughly as much as Vincent proposes to charge in order to conduct an in-house revaluation that rivals the contractor’s standards of quality.
“It would be about two and a half million for us to handle the revaluation,” he added. “So, it would be very similar if we want similar quality.”
Akins was doubtful, however, that he could complete an in-house reval by 2027 since his own appraisers must also handle day-to-day assessments driven by new construction and renovation work.
Akins’ arguments convinced commissioner Bill Lashley that the county would probably get its money’s worth from Vincent Valuations.
“You will probably get a much better value for the dollars,” the commissioner said.
But, in the final analysis, the tax administrator was unable to sway either Thompson or Turner to his point of view.
Akins conceded that he didn’t need a formal vote from the commissioners to begin contract negotiations with Vincent. He nevertheless asked the board for its informal blessing – which neither Thompson nor Turner were wont to bestow.
Turner, for one, said he’d need more information to make a decision one way or the other. As a result, John Paisley, Jr., the chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners, instructed Akins to return at a future meeting with some firm figures for Vincent to handle the reval.
