Impact of new Lee County tax roll values

Lee County’s property appraiser answered questions about the impact of the new tax roll values.

Matt Caldwell said his team had to determine the value of 550,000 pieces of real estate.

“The hurricane definitely destroyed buildings,” Caldwell said, “so we had to categorize and keep track of everything that was destroyed or impacted severely by the hurricane. It added up to about 100,000 properties throughout the county that we had to come up with a conclusion one way or the other.”

Damaged or not, the Lee County Appraiser’s Office had to assign value to properties. That number will eventually determine how much people pay in property taxes.

“The tax bills will go out in November, based on a tax rate applied to these values,” Caldwell said.

The Lee County Appraiser’s Office released a table of tax roll values Tuesday to begin the process of allowing jurisdictions and other taxing authorities to hold public hearings. They will also set up proposed ad valorem tax rates that apply to property in Lee County.

“Lately, the past couple of years, I kind of feel that the taxes are a little bit too high for everyone,” said John Semiklose, who lives in Lehigh.

The list went out to government facilities such as cities, the school district, libraries and fire departments who will take the numbers and develop their yearly budgets.

“We will boil down every single property, and they’re going to get their individual piece of this in August,” Caldwell said.