Chief appraiser missing deadline?

After a particularly bad year for Travis County taxpayers seeking to protest the appraised value of their homes, it looks like this year may be just as difficult, even though the Travis Appraisal Review Board has apparently hired more people to sit on its appraisal panels. According to Bill Aleshire, one of the attorneys working for ProTax, which represents homeowners wishing to dispute appraisals done by the Travis Central Appraisal District, Marya Crigler, chief appraiser for TCAD, is apparently going to miss today’s deadline to turn over new appraisals to the TARB. There was an item on the appraisal review board’s agenda for Monday, May 13, for Crigler to turn over the new appraisal numbers. However, Aleshire said a ProTax employee in the audience reported that the board did not receive the records at that meeting because Crigler was “running behind.” Aleshire pointed out that today, May 15, is the statutory deadline for Crigler to give those records to the appraisal board, and the board is apparently not scheduled to meet within the next three days because there is no listing for such a meeting on the TCAD website. Aleshire also pointed out that the appraisal review board has to send out notices about when and where they are going to hold each hearing 14 days prior to the hearing. “If they’re going to start on June 7,” as they have previously indicated, “they have to send out the specific notice of hearing and the evidence by May 24,” he said. The Austin Monitor contacted Betty Thompson, chair of the appraisal review board, seeking a comment on Crigler’s failure to present records to the board on time. Thompson politely refused to discuss the matter, saying she had no comment. “Nobody knows what the hell is going on because they won’t communicate. It’s the weirdest year ever,” Aleshire concluded.