Any attempt to achieve equity with broad brushstrokes is likely to be deemed unfair. So it is with Haywood County, which opted to perform a reval in the crushed housing market. Many other counties, if they could, postponed what they knew would be controversial.
As it turned out, property values for the proverbial McMansions on the hill went down when those for Joe the Plumber’s castle went up (in part because foreclosures don’t count in market analyses). Citizens have been hounding the commissioners:
Eddie Cabe who lives in Canton says he is one of those people. His $67,000 home in Canton went up to $125,000. But it is a 90-year-old “box” house as he calls it, lacking proper floor joists, no insulation in the walls, and pull strings for light switches.
Many others have been telling the commissioners there is a conspiracy of one kind or another:
At a county commissioner meeting two weeks ago, the repeated criticism and conspiracy theories proved too much and [Tax Department Head David] Francis shot back after particularly insulting comments by Monroe Miller, the county’s chief critic who even has a web site dedicated to his fulltime hobby of attacking county government officials.
