The Appeal of the Appeal of the Assessment.

Appeals to the Orleans Parish Board of Review (a.k.a. The City Council) are made to the Louisiana Tax Commission. The Commission's Members are;

• Jill Giberga - District 1
• Scott Brupbacher - District 2
• Kenneth P. Naquin, Jr. - District 3
• Elizabeth Guglielmo - District 4
• Richard Young - District 5

Orleans Parish is in District 3 and our representative Kenneth P. Naquin, Jr. is a Deputy Assessor in Orleans Parish.

I spent some quality time on the phone this morning talking to the nice people at the Louisiana Tax Commission.

They advise me that they have received approximately 1400 appeals from Orleans Parish and are still entering them into their computer. They estimate that 700 of these appeals were from the Third District. They hope to have an actual count by the end of the day Monday.

I can't tell if Erroll Williams is appealing every single appeal granted, the website listing the determinations is not longer up. My impression from reading the site was that the majority of appeals were denied. It might be very interesting to see which properties have been appealed, and which haven't been.

The list of appeals from other parishes is as stunning as it is short,

• Iberville Parish 1 appeal
• Lincoln Parish 1 appeal
• St. Charles Parish 1 appeal
• St. Martin Parish 1 appeal
• St. Tammany Parish 1 appeal.
  

That's five appeals total for all parishes other than Orleans, including no appeals for Jefferson, the most populous parish or East Baton Rouge or any of the other high population parish.

Like the Orleans Parish Board of Review (a.k.a. The City Council) the Commission has hired a firm to handle the extraordinary number of appeals. Procedures and timetables are not final but I understand that every taxpayer whose appeal is being appealed will be notified of a hearing and have 10 days to submit information for the record. The taxpayer may appear at the hearing and present evidence and witnesses.

Since each appeal requires a $50.00 filing fee, the Assessors have collectively spent $70,000 of our money, assuming they actually have to pay the fee.

This is so weird. If only anyone had actually gone to look at my house, they could see its condition and avoided all of this.