Mar. 31—FRANKFORT — A property owner, appealing 2023 tax assessments on two vacant lots she owns on Betsie Lake, has filed complaints about the local assessment and review process with two state regulatory offices.

“When it feels like government is running over people, you can’t just sit back and let others do the work for you,” Thelma Rider, 82, said. “You have to get involved.”

Rider, who has become a fixture at local municipal meetings — sometimes bringing her own tape recorder — said she filed complaints with the Michigan Attorney General’s office and the state tax commission.

The AG’s office generally does not comment on complaints; officials with the state tax commission on Friday confirmed Rider’s complaint is currently under review.

“I hope they make sure that every taxpayer since 2017 has been made whole here in Frankfort,” Rider said. “I don’t know how they’ll unravel that mess.”

Records show Rider has personal experience trying to understand significant property assessment increases on two vacant lots she owns within city limits.

The lots, both small and unbuildable, are next door to Rider’s home on Betsie Lake — a wetland connecting the Betsie River with Betsie Bay, between the M-22 bridge and an old train trestle.

The boundary between Crystal Lake Township and the City of Frankfort cuts through Rider’s property, her house is built on a township lot and the adjacent vacant lots are in the city limits.

City of Frankfort tax records show one vacant lot Rider owns was assessed at $1,200 in 2022 and $56,100 in 2023. The second lot was assessed at $1,100 in 2022 and $45,300 in 2023.

When the local Board of Review denied Rider’s appeal in March 2023, Rider hired an attorney and in July appealed the increases to the state tax tribunal.

At a hearing Jan. 25 in front of the administrative law judge, Erissa J. Glekler, Frankfort’s assessor Christie Brow told the judge the increases were warranted and backed up by market conditions.

Brow has submitted recent sales of vacant waterfront lots as comparables, a number of which had frontage on Crystal Lake and Lake Michigan, which Rider’s attorney, Paul Callum, said made no sense.

Earlier this month, Judge Glekler agreed.

“The Tribunal finds it likely that there was, in fact, no market basis for the assessments and that they were wholly arbitrary,” Glekler said of assessments of Rider’s property prior to 2023.

“The current assessments are similarly unsupported,” the judge said, adding that Brow failed to submit a land-use study supporting recent increases and that the sales data Brow offered as evidence was largely irrelevant.

Glekler put the state equalized value of Rider’s lots at $1,600 and $5,280, tens of thousands less than Brow’s assessment.

Glekler’s opinion is preliminary, although Brow said Friday she does not plan to appeal.

“The procedure played out exactly as it’s supposed to,” Brow said. “And for assessors, the change to the 2023 assessed value doesn’t really affect anything at this point.”

“I had to defend my work initially, but I don’t have to keep it going,” Brow said, adding that doing so would likely “antagonize the taxpayer,” meaning Rider.

Brow said recent public discussion critiquing property assessment increases, and previous Record-Eagle reporting on Rider’s case, left out an important point.

“People still don’t realize they don’t pay their taxes based on the assessed value,” Brow said. “Everyone was concerned about how much her taxes were going to go up because of this increase. It went up $2.50 on each parcel.”

In Michigan, a property’s assessed value is determined annually by the assessor and the figure is legally required to represent about half the property’s market value.

Property taxes owed are calculated using the prior year’s taxable value, according to the law, and adjusted for losses, improvements and inflation.

If the property changes hands, however, a property’s taxable value is often uncapped — meaning the new owner, unless otherwise exempt, pays taxes based on the assessed value.

Rider said this was among her concerns — that her beneficiary would pay what Rider called unsupported and exorbitant taxes when inheriting the property, if Rider didn’t appeal those amounts now.

Rider said she’s pleased the judge decided the case in her favor, but she and others continue to harbor fairness concerns, which they’ve shared at public meetings.

The tape recorder, she said, is specifically for municipal meetings like the Board of Review that aren’t recorded by officials or staff.

Other local property owners have attended meetings and shared public comment regarding more recent assessments on their properties.

Matt Valascho and Frances Pablo live downstate and own a second home on Betsie Bay near Rider’s property that they purchased in December 2020 for $489,000.

“Like Thelma, we have quite a bit of water frontage, but it’s all weeds and three of our five lots are wetlands and floodplains,” Valascho said. “You can’t build on them.”

Valascho said the property in 2021 was assessed by Brow at more than $900,000 which, unlike in Rider’s case, did affect the taxes they’re required to pay because they’d just purchased it.

Records show a $1.5 million Lake Michigan property was cited as comparable to the Valascho/Pablo property to support the increase.

Valascho and Pablo said they were unable to appeal the amount to the Board of Review because they didn’t receive their Notice of Assessment until after the board’s March 2021 meeting.

“Maybe it was the COVID pandemic and that’s why we didn’t get the mail on time, but we really don’t know,” Valascho said Friday. “It’s hard to say why we didn’t get it.”

Michigan law states property owners generally cannot seek relief from the state tax tribunal unless they first appeal to their local Board of Review.

Valascho and Pablo hired an attorney to ask the state tax commission to make an exception and hear their case from 2021 and, since that time, the couple has been in a kind of three-year-plus limbo, with no state-level hearing yet scheduled.

Another City of Frankfort property owner, Bill Shaw, said his residential property was assessed as including a garage with a furnace and a bathroom in it.

The garage exists, he said, but the interior is unfinished and there’s no furnace, plumbing or bathroom.

“I had concerns that some of these assessments are random,” Shaw said. “And I don’t know if this is happening to everyone or just me.”

Shaw earlier this month appealed to Frankfort’s Board of Review, which he said granted his appeal and treated him with professionalism.

He then went one step further and applied for the Board of Review’s open spot.

Frankfort’s Board of Review has three seats; there are two members currently serving — Kris Burks and Rosann Fuller — after a long-serving member and former chair, Don Mills, retired last year.

Another proposed member, Don Ferguson, apparently never took office.

Shaw said he was bolstered to see Frankfort Mayor Joanne Holwerda support his application, despite his previous public comments expressing concerns about assessments.

Shaw said he needs to undergo training before he can join the Board of Review and expects that to be completed prior to the July meeting and Holwerda, on Friday confirmed that Shaw had been appointed.

“I think part of the board’s job is to be a judge over the two different viewpoints,” Shaw said about deciding future assessment appeals.

Board member training has been a sore spot for Rider, who previously filed Freedom of Information Act requests she said appeared to show not all previous board members completed it, as the state requires.

“How were these previous people supposed to be fair, supposed to make good decisions, when they didn’t know the law?” Rider said.

Frankfort City Council in 2017 — the same year Brow was hired — adopted an ethics policy, which states it applies to city officers, employees, elected and appointed officials.

City officials are currently accepting letters of interest from residents interested in serving on a three-member ethics advisory board, although Holwerda said recent tax assessment appeals and public comments were not the catalyst.

“That committee is part of the personnel policy, but hadn’t been followed through and formed,” Holwerda said on Friday in an email.

Brow, Rider and Valascho may differ on specific assessments, but they do agree on one point: Not enough property owners know what a property tax card is, or ask to review it.

Every property has a record card on file at their municipality’s office, which is supposed to show features of the property used for calculating values. These records are public, and can be reviewed annually for accuracy.

“Anytime I get a call from a taxpayer, I ask, ‘Have you seen your record card? Please look it over,'” Brow said. “If anything is incorrect, let me know.”

Rider said property owners should compare changes from one year to the next, to make sure previous features and notations have not been erroneously removed or added.

“You can find all kinds of surprises on there,” Rider said.