Natalie,
I am not sure what your policy is for sending out messages to all the homeowners of the Shipyard but I hope when you read the below email message you will agree to forward the message to the entire Shipyard list as while I have many (BCC'ed on this email) but not all and in my opinion all need to get this message. If you can please cut and paste the first line as the subject line for the email and then the rest into the message.
Should you have any questions or concerns on doing this please let me know and thanks for your help with this.
Jason Fried
Important Property Tax Information
Dear Fellow Shipyard Owners,
For those of you who have closed long enough ago that the city has transferred the property from Lennar name to yours this message is for you. In my case this took about 7 months from closing so not all of you have had this happen yet so you can ignore this message for now if you have not gotten your Change of Ownership as this will not impact you yet.
In the last couple of days we started to get our "Notification of 2016-2017 Assessed Value" from the Assessor-Recorder (AR) office. All those who I have talked with had big errors in the property value, in my case it was almost $250,000 more then it should be which would mean thousands of dollars more in property taxes. So thanks to help from Matt over in Olympia several of us have called the Assessor-Recorders office to ask about this. I did get a chance to talk with a very nice hard working civil servant named Al in the AR office. He had gotten several calls before me and seemed to think an error was made in several letters sent out. While he is not the one who handles this issues he seemed to want to try and help us. From a high level perspective it seemed like an error occurred. It sounds to me they are working to fix the issue and get us new letters with the correct amount but given he is not responsible for this and does not know exactly how this might have happen he could not guarantee everyone would get fixed at this point but was hopeful. This should take 30-45 days to happen which is good and bad. If the issue does not get fixed we need to appeal the amount in the letter we just got by September 15. Now 45 days from now is basically the end of the official appeal period which made me personally nervous. He said I could call him back mid August since he should be able to see if the items have been changed in the system while we wait to get the official letter. Given mine and his vacation schedule, along with how long it should take from them to get any changes they see when they review all file for errors, I am going to call him the week of August 22nd. If the issue is not fixed you still have time to fill an official appeal by Sept. 15th.
Now I am personally hopeful this will all get fixed I am going to talk Al to check in on my account and I am happy to help coordinate other who want to check in so he does not get 50-60 calls we could send him one list withever one who has seen an issue. This is easiest done by using your "Block and Lot" number as this is how their system looks you up, not be street address. So if you want to share with me your "Block and Lot" number, found on your 16/17 Assessed Value letter you got, I will make a spread sheet to sent to him so he can check everyone who thinks they got a messed up value. Now this next part of this request is 100% your choice but if you want to give me what you think the correct base value should be I can add that to the spread sheet so when I ask him to check for all of us he know what you think is the correct number. If you are not comfortable given me that information I totally get it and will simply list your Lot and Block number.
So those that wish for me to add you to the spreadsheet please email you info at jasonlfried@hotmail.com
I am hopefully we will see a positive end to this and if you have questions please let me know.
Jason Fried
Merchant #411
