Cedar Rapids Assessor Scott Labus to retire

CEDAR RAPIDS - Scott Labus is the man behind the city office you may love or hate.

As Cedar Rapids city assessor, Labus and his staff of 14 operate a bit under the radar as they decide how valuable the 55,000 parcels of property are in the city and if that value in any given year goes up or down.

Higher value can result in higher taxes, and lower value can mean that the quality of your home is on the decline.

'Very few people yell and scream anymore,” Labus said last week. 'In the old days, there was a lot more of it.”

Labus, 62, is retiring after more than eight years as the city assessor and 24 years before that as the city's chief deputy assessor.

As assessor, he works at the pleasure of a Conference Board, comprised of city, county and school district elected officials. His office operates with its own piece of the Cedar Rapids property-tax bill - 32 cents per $1,000 of a property's taxable valuation.

As Labus leaves, he said his office's effort to set property valuations is as accurate as ever. Data drives valuations - it's not a dart throw, he said.

In work that began as chief deputy assessor and has been refined as assessor, Labus has divided the city into some 200 micro-neighborhoods so he can compare property sales in those small pieces of geography to better value the properties there. His office also looks at sales in each condominium complex to set values in the complex, and the office separates certain commercial properties - cereal plants, warehouses, downtown office space, for example - in an effort to more accurately value those properties.

In addition, Labus has set aside a long-established practice of hiring an outside appraisal firm to inspect and assess every single property once a decade. Instead, he said he has saved money by adding two additional appraisers who inspect every property once every six to eight years, a little at a time.

That leads to more accurate information more quickly, he said.

Labus said he counts as an accomplishment his willingness to encourage property owners to challenge their valuations, both informally and formally in front of the city's Board of Review. The office is more transparent than ever, he said, and the office's website provides easy access for residents to see valuations for their property, their neighbors' property and any property in the city.

In the big picture, Labus said Cedar Rapids's overall valuation has been 'very stable” and hasn't been shaken with property bubbles and economic downturns in the past 20 years.

The large majority of property owners accept their new property valuation without appeal. As proof, he said owners of between 800 and 1,000 parcels out of the 55,000 parcels in the city have come in to question the valuations on an annual basis.

'If I've had two mantras here, it's I've always been fair and reasonable, and the benefit of the doubt always goes to the taxpayer,” he said.

Labus said one 'disheartening” change over the years has been an increase in property owners who use tax representatives to take appeals on from the city's Board of Review to the state's Property Assessment Appeal Board and then to District Court.

He told the story of one tax representative who was fighting to lower the value of a downtown building, but who refused to use the recent sales price at another nearby downtown building. Asked about the higher price, the rep said the other property owner didn't know what he was doing.

Labus checked, and the rep also had advised that other owner.

Critics of local government in recent years have objected in instances when the city has paid a much higher price for commercial property than Labus's assessed value. It's the same in every city, he said.

'A city's motivation to buy a property is completely different from the motivation of any other buyer or seller,” Labus said. 'It's the whole world that the city is looking at. How does it affect the area of the city or the entire city itself?”

Kevin Platz, executive at the Cedar Rapids Area Association of Realtors, said Labus has taken the lead to present his office's statistical data to the association and to listen to feedback about it.

'He's definitely been an asset to this community,” Platz said.

David Liesveld, a certified home inspector and one of the five members of the city's Board of Review, called Labus and his 'philosophy” of valuing property 'very fair.”

The Board of Review listens to the appeals of Labus's valuations, and he said Labus has been quick to make changes when new information of a property has been brought to light.

Keith Westercamp, a property appraiser, Cedar Rapids school board member and a member of the Conference Board that oversees the City Assessor's Office, said Labus 'has come out strong” in his annual evaluations in terms of running the office professionally and in a fair way.

By way of example, he said Labus makes sure that his staff keeps an arm length from Board of Review appeal hearings so property owners feel they are getting a fair hearing.

Westercamp called Labus a 'statewide leader” in the use of technology and in listening to community members and business owners.

All sales data aside, Labus said he remains intrigued about who is buying what kind of property and why. He's seen popularity run from the split level, to the bath and toilet room in a house, to the master bedroom with its own bath to the three-car garage, he said.

'Demand changes, and it's like anything else, wherever demand is going, supply has to follow,” Labus said.

He said the old joke is that every house comes with a set of photographs, one which looks like a mansion for use when the owner is trying to sell and one which looks like a shack when the owner wants the assessor to lower the value for tax purposes.

'It's the business we're in,” Labus said.