The Troup County Commission may decide Jan. 6 whether a countywide revaluation will be done in-house or by a reputable contractor.

If staffing additions are not made in the tax assessors’ office, the revaluation should be done by a contractor, said consultant Jim Davis of Macon, who was hired to review operations in the assessors’ office. Two contractors have issued proposals ranging from about $730,000 to $1.1 million.

Davis, who has been a chief appraiser and employee of the state Department of Revenue, presented these observations and recommendations at Tuesday’s County Commission meeting:

n The county should consider adding two or three real-property appraisers to help maintain fair and uniform values on the county’s 30,000 parcels of land, and deal with growth that will come about from Kia Motors and related industrial, commercial and residential development.

n Appoint a deputy chief ap-praiser to help manage the staff and help chief appraiser Dana Eaton concentrate more on office management.

“There is also a need for an experienced commercial-industrial appraiser on the staff,” Davis said. “This need is magnified by the pending addition of the Kia property and associated businesses.”

n Recent perceptions of inconsistent land values were the result of misinformation on the county’s Web site, which hadn’t been kept up to date.

“I recommend that the Web site be updated on a frequent basis” through new appraisal software the county has purchased, he said. “Such updates should be at least weekly, but more preferably nightly by in-house (information technology) staff,” Davis said.

The WinGap software, which is used by most other counties in Georgia, “will improve significantly the ability of the appraisal staff to produce equalized property values beginning in 2010,” he said.

n Aerial mapping should be implemented as soon as possible to help maintain fair land values.

n Reports by the state Department of Revenue and Georgia Department of Audits shows that values on the 2007 digest are well within acceptable standards.

“This indicates that the chief appraiser and staff have been doing an excellent job in producing proper and uniform property values,” Davis said. “The most recent tax digest was approved by the state with no citations and there have been no monetary fines or assessments issued against Troup County based on current statistics.

“… Your numbers in all categories and statistics are an excellent indication the staff is giving you proper and uniform values.”

Because of staffing problems, the county could only revaluate about one-third of the county each year, but “our goal is to revaluate the whole county every year,” said Zoning Administrator Scott Turk.

Joel Martin can be reached at jmartin@lagrangenews .com or at (706) 884-7311, Ext. 235.