Johnson County Supervisors won’t refund resident’s taxes over nonexistent tower

IOWA CITY - In a close vote by the county Board of Supervisors, one resident's request for a refund on taxes she paid following an erroneous property assessment has been denied.

The Johnson County Board of Supervisors on Thursday voted 2-3, with supervisors Pat Harney and Janelle Rettig in support, to refund Iowa City resident Jean Fisher the roughly $5,000 in taxes she paid over the past few years following an inaccurate tax assessment of her property near 4911 Morse Road. Fisher had been paying taxes on a cellular tower that has never been built.

Failing to reach a majority approval, the refund request was denied.

Supervisor Mike Carberry said he sympathized with Fisher and acknowledged that a mistake was made by the Johnson County Assessor's Office, but expressed concern that refunding the taxes would set a precedent for more residents to seek refunds on assessments in the future.

'Even though I feel very sad for what happened, I'm not going to be able to support this,” he said. 'If we do this, there's going to be more and more people and we're going to have to grant more and more refunds on sad stories. I don't think that's a precedent and a road we want to go down, I think that creates a slippery slope.”

Harney did not share Carberry's viewpoint.

'I couldn't disagree more with what Mike said, this mistake was made by a new assessor ... he looked at the wrong tower,” he said. 'I don't think two errors on this is going to make a right.”

Rettig argued the board was not only obligated to right the wrong, but that a specific section of Iowa Code allows the board to direct the county treasurer to refund taxes that had been erroneously paid.

'I think that's exactly why this code exists,” she said. 'This is a much different situation than a difference in opinion or a difference in data - this property was assessed based on a structure that was never built.”

Supervisors Terrence Neuzil and Rod Sullivan did not comment on the matter.

Several years ago, Fisher entered into an agreement with Verizon Wireless to allow for the construction of a cellular tower on a portion of her property. The tower was never built.

In 2010, a Johnson County assessor performed an assessment of Fisher's property, but mistook an existing monopole tower roughly two miles from Fisher's site as the Verizon tower and the chunk of property was changed from agricultural to commercial, thus increasing the property tax payments for both Fisher and Verizon Wireless.

County taxes are based on actual use, not zoning, and the belief that the tower was built increased Fisher's tax bill by roughly $1,600 a year. The erroneous assessment cost Fisher roughly $5,000 in total, according to county documents.

Verizon Wireless, which has lost roughly $25,000 since the assessment was made, has not contacted the county about the increased taxes.

The Johnson County Assessor's Office has since corrected the assessment issue, but could only change the value retroactively for the 2013 assessment.