Document 6554611

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DAILY JOURNAL
Center Grove teams too much for Franklin
dailyjournal.net
MONDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2014
WEATHER
Today
Skies: Cloudy, T-storm
Temps: High 78; low 64
MAP, PAGE A8
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75 cents
Johnson County, Indiana
What’s your property worth?
County officials making progress on backlog of tax appeals
BY STEVE GARBACZ
INSIDE: Details on tax appeals
filed in county. A8
DAILY JOURNAL STAFF WRITER
sgarbacz@dailyjournal.net
More than 3,000 people appealed the value of their property
after a statewide reassessment,
and fewer than a third got the reduction they wanted.
More than 300 property owners
are still waiting for the county to
take a second look at how much
their home, land or business is
worth. They are a part of the more
than 700 people who are waiting
for a resolution after disputing the
value of their property — some
that stretch back to 2013.
While waiting, those property
owners are paying more in taxes because the county said the
value of their land or their
home — one of the determining
factors when calculating tax
bills — went up compared with
past years.
The good news is the assessor’s
office is catching up on its backlog
and getting cases resolved. Before
the end of next year, the county
could be ready to start handling
new appeals as soon as they come
in, county assessor Mark Alexander said.
More than 4,000 taxpayers questioned their property’s value that
is used to determine how much
they pay in property taxes after a
statewide reassessment in 2012.
The reassessment was meant to
update values for land as well as
buildings based on the estimated
cost to replace features such as
brick walls or basements. During
that reassessment, almost every
property owner saw some change
in their values, with 49 percent going up and 46 percent going down.
When assessments went up, it was
often because of the updated cost
used by appraisers for certain
items, with masonry work for
Get the early edition
City to residents:
Do not rake debris
into piles on street
BY STEVE GARBACZ
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DEATHS
Franklin
Greenwood
Jeffrey M. Humphrey, 52
Doug Smith, 58
Indianapolis
Anthony ‘Tony’ E.
Rudicel, 56
Whiteland
Nicholas C. Todorovich, 45
Mary Louise Walters, 84
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Accent..........................A6-A7
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Comics...............................B5
Editorials............................A4
Obituaries..........................A5
Police, fire.............................A3
Sports............................B1-B4
Southside............................A3
TV listings............................A7
Weather..............................A8
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DAILY
DAILY JOURNAL STAFF WRITER
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Schools
work to
ON THE WEB
Roy L. Dickinson, 77
Marilyn Faye Downey, 71
Betty Jo (Ramsey)
Mitchell, 69
(SEE WORTH PAGE A8)
’Tis the
season
to curb
leaves
EARLY EDUCATION
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brick or stone being one of the
most notable.
“The 4,000 just was too big of a
number to do anything other than
what we did, which was labor at it.
It just took time,” Alexander said.
For about the last two years, the
county has been working to answer questions, correct any errors
and work with property owners
who don’t agree with the value assigned to their property.
Officials aim to keep kindergartners on same page
W
hen Franklin parents sign
their 5-year-olds up for
kindergarten, teachers start
working immediately to find out
what the children know about
counting, the
STORY BY alphabet, shapes
and colors.
TOM
If a student has
LANGE
never been to
PHOTOS BY preschool and can’t
recognize letters or
SCOTT
numbers, Franklin
ROBERSON
invites them to a
three-week kindergarten camp a month before school
starts. The camp won’t teach
children everything they need to
know for their first day of kindergarten, but it will introduce them to the
kinds of lessons they’ll learn and
eventually have to master before
they go on to first grade.
Not all area schools get an
advanced look at incoming kindergartners. Westwood Elementary
School in Greenwood doesn’t have
the money to pay employees to
assess students the spring before
they start school, meaning the first
chance teachers have to gauge what
students know and don’t know is on
the first day of school, Principal Lisa
Harkness said.
(SEE BEHIND PAGE A8)
“
We are having to have
more interventions for
these kids. But what
the research shows is
the earlier you can have
those interventions, the
more successful they’re
going to be later on.
Westwood Elementary
Principal Lisa Harkness
”
On helping kindergartners
meet their potential
Pictured: Kooper Tischner, 5, colors Friday in Chloe Limbach’s Northwood Elementary School kindergarten classroom.
Leaves are starting to come
down off the trees and cities are
already picking up piles before
they start clogging storm drains.
Last year, an early snow covered
piles of leaves in yards and at
curbsides before workers could
finish picking them up. Then the
weekend before Christmas, heavy
rain hit the area and the combination of melting snow and high water washed those piles down toward drain inlets. When the drains
got clogged in neighborhoods and
along streets, water began backing up leading to high water
around homes and businesses.
Greenwood and Franklin are
hoping not to have the same issue
this year.
Vacuum trucks are already circulating through neighborhoods in
Franklin this fall and will continue
through early December. Greenwood has been making a few unscheduled trips before its leaf pickup program starts in full force in
early November, but residents who
are proactively raking and bagging
can help out by dropping off leaves
at the city’s brush collection site
off Fry Road, street superintendent
Kenny Duncan said. People have to
bring proof they are a Greenwood
resident to drop off at the brush
pile at 1244 Fry Road, since residents pay for the service as part of
their monthly trash bill.
Greenwood also approved a
new rule this month to allow
commercial properties such as
businesses or apartment complexes to get leaf services for a
one-time fee of $75.
The county doesn’t have a leaf
pickup program, so Center Grove
area residents outside of Greenwood have to find their own methods to take care of leaves, Johnson
County highway director Luke
Mastin said. Residents should do
something to control leaves, before
they wash down and clog up drains
and lead to flooding, he said.
(SEE LEAVES PAGE A8)
OFFICER STEPPING DOWN
Indiana National Guard leader retiring after 36 years
I
n his 36-year military career, he has
prepared thousands of soldiers to
serve overseas,
STORY BY
helped in the recovery
ROBERT ZIEGLER
after Hurricane
Katrina and worked to
prevent both combat and accidental
deaths of soldiers serving in Iraq.
Greenwood resident Todd Townsend,
who enlisted in 1978, retired last month
as a colonel in the Indiana National
Guard. He served as post commander at
Camp Atterbury from 2009 to 2012 and
more recently as vice chief of staff
for the National Guard Headquarters
in Indianapolis.
The 53-year-old’s retirement ends a
military career during which he visited
15 countries, flew helicopters, commanded
soldiers and assisted with security at the
1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, where
a bomb went off. He enlisted as a
(SEE OFFICER PAGE A8)
Former Camp Atterbury commanding officer Col. Todd Townsend recently retired from the Indiana National Guard. SCOTT ROBERSON | DAILY JOURNAL