Investigation: Property Tax Favoritism?
Reported by: Jaie Avila - WOAI

Many of you are upset because even though the housing market is down, your property tax appraisal went up. In some cases, way up.

A News 4 Trouble Shooters investigation found that while most Bexar County homeowners will see their property tax bills increase, people in one neighborhood had their appraisals go down sharply.

News 4 Trouble Shooter Jaie Avila shows us who just happens to live there.

One of the homes inside one gated community on the north side belongs to the chief appraiser for Bexar County. The property tax value of many of those homes went down by tens of thousands of dollars this year. That has some taxpayers suspicious, and angry, about how their homes are appraised.

Tom Deline doesn't live in a gated community. His 33 year old home, in a moderately priced northwest side neighborhood, has never been remodeled and is literally crumbling in spots.

Despite his protest, Deline's home appraisal went up more than $6,000 this year.

"They had their mind set on what my house was valued at," says Deline of his appraisal hearing. "They were going to stick to that price, regardless of the evidence that I presented and I didn't think it was fair."

The Bexar Appraisal District is the agency that determines what your home is worth: The amount you will be taxed on.

It does that by comparing what homes have sold for recently in your area, along with square footage and other factors.

It says about three-fourths of the homes in Bexar County went up in value this year. But not in 'The Park at Deerfield' neighborhood, where just about every home had its property tax value drop by $20,000 to $30,000, including the home belonging to Michael Amezquita, the man who runs the Bexar Appraisal District.

His home appraisal went down $26,640 from 2007.

The News 4 Trouble Shooters analyzed tax records and found that the drop in appraised values was concentrated on Amezquita's street, and the streets directly adjacent to it. Home values in surrounding neighborhoods, with very few exceptions, all went up. In many cases, those values increased by $20,000 to $30,000.

We went to talk to Chief Appraiser Amezquita. He says he has no involvement in the appraisal of his own home. Instead his top deputy handles it and he wanted her present during our interview.

"With so many neighborhoods seeing appraisals go up, how is it that your appraisal, and the appraisals of many of the homes on your street went down by like 30 or 20 thousand dollars?" asked News 4 Trouble Shooter Jaie Avila.

"I'm going to let Mary speak to that, simply because I don't do the appraisal work," answered Amezquita.

"We had five sales in that neighborhood that indicated that the values had decreased slightly," said Deputy Chief Appraiser Mary Kieke. "I think they may have been slightly overstated last year, I think it was a real boom neighborhood in 2007 or 2006."

Kieke says the homes in Amezquita's neighborhood were so over-valued the past couple of years, their calculations determined that appraisals here should be adjusted downward, now that the market has cooled off.

But that is what homeowners all over the county think should be done in their neighborhoods.

"Why his neighborhood? Why not ours," wonders Deline.

"I think it stinks," says Carol Key, another homeowner who saw her property tax appraisal go up this year. "What you need to ask the chief appraiser is when the appraisals come around next year, are they going to drop our appraisals any?"

Amezquita says he has gone out of his way the past few years to make sure his home was appraised higher than similar homes in his neighborhood.

"I know that I have never appealed my value to have it reduced, nor have I asked my staff to do anything other than reflect what the value of the properties are in that area, whether it's my home, your home or anybody else's home," says Amezquita.

But no one is questioning whether Amezquita's home value is in line with the rest of his neighborhood.

It's whether his neighborhood is getting the same treatment as the rest of Bexar County.

Amezquita adamantly denies his neighborhood is getting a tax break. He says he has the right to keep his appraisal information secret if he wishes, but he keeps it public because he has nothing to hide.