COUNTY'S VALUATION WAY UP IN 1995

JACKSON -- Cape Girardeau County's assessed valuation climbed a significant $36 million in 1995 from the 1994 figure.

Total assessed valuation for real estate and personal property is $547,883,507 this year.

County Assessor Jerry Reynolds said that number would drop by $4 million because of a new state law passed at the end of the last legislative session.

People who own apartments, nursing homes and mobile home parks now must be reassessed at the 19 percent residential rate instead of 32 percent for commercial property.

Still, this year marked the biggest jump since 1985, the first year a new way of assessing property went into full effect.

County Auditor H. Weldon Macke said a significant amount of construction is responsible for the increase.

"The building permits in Cape Girardeau and Jackson have been out of this world," he said. "All of it has been mushrooming for the past couple of years."

In addition, new-car sales have been up in the county, raising personal property assessments.

Despite the considerable increase in taxes for some, only one person appeared before the county Board of Equalization this year, which met on Thursday for the last time in 1995.

That person's house plans had included a finished basement, but she didn't have the basement completed. The board agreed her assessment, mailed in May or June, should have been slightly lower.

The board is made up of the county's three commissioners, the assessor, the county auditor and the mayors of Cape Girardeau and Jackson, if the mayors choose to participate.

The members usually hear a dozen cases a year. Reynolds, who became county assessor in 1977, said most of the disagreements this year were handled informally.

Taxpayers' most common complaint is that their assessment is too high, so their tax bill is too high.

"I can sympathize with them, but there's nothing I can do about it," Reynolds said. "If you can afford to buy the house, you have to be able to afford the taxes on it."

County real estate was completely reassessed by 1985, the first effective year of a 1979 reassessment plan. It said property must be reassessed regularly even if it doesn't change hands.

Before the decision, a person who built a home worth $20,000 in 1965 and didn't move would be paying the same amount of taxes in 1975, when the home was worth thousands more.

Today, new construction and land improvements are assessed in even-numbered years and the entire county is assessed in odd-numbered years.

Taxpayers saw gigantic increases or decreases in their valuations after 1985. Board of Equalization meetings, conducted starting the second Monday of July, were packed.

"Back then we had people everywhere," Reynolds said. "After the assessments were done, we reviewed them with people informally. We still had people at the Board of Equalization."