Assessor talks taxes

“The simple answer?” replied Amery. “We have voted all those taxes in.”

“We currently have 11 bonds [and local levies] that we are paying off,” she explained, pointing to a chart that showed how taxes are assessed in various districts throughout the county.

Not all bonds or levies impact every taxpayer, but some areas, like The Dalles, are impacted by many of them, she said. Bonds are not impacted by property tax limitation measures, and the full bond rates are paid outside of “compression” or limitations, she explained.

Amery serves the county as both assessor and tax collector, a job she has held for about a year and a half. “I really, really enjoy it,” she said. “It was something that really resonated with me.”

She is running unopposed for re-election this fall.

She noted that her office staff is getting used to her “big idea,” taken from her years working in the private sector, which is that taxpayers are still customers.

“That is who they are in my office,” she explained. “Customer service is huge in my office.”

“It’s my job, but it’s also a community service,” she said of her work. “We provide these services to everyone in our community. We don’t make the rules, we implement the rules that are made at the state level.”

She added that she was surprised how few people understood the tax system. “I’m amazed how many people don’t know how it works,” she said.

She admitted the tax system is very complicated, however, as she explained how taxes are assessed using a combination of real market and assessed values, calculated in relation to tax limitation measures adopted at the state level.

Taxpayers in the county should soon be able to access a new website created by her department to improve their understanding of the system and how their taxes are calculated, she said. The site will provide specific tax information for each of the 35 taxing districts in Wasco County. The website is now only awaiting finishing work by the technical provider. Her department is also working on a system to allow taxpayers to pay taxes online.

Providing property-specific assessment information online will take longer, she added. “We are working on that, but it is a huge job and may take a couple of years,” she said.

Wasco County has an assessed value of over $2.7 billion, she said. “That’s a lot of value for a small rural county.”

She added that the percentage of assessed taxes collected — 94.7 percent last year — has been going up for several years now. “With the economy turning up, collections are getting better,” she explained.

“The county is doing better, and collections show that.”