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Montezuma County Assessor Redoes 2017 Property Valuations; County Now Complies With State Law

Austin Cope

Property owners in Montezuma County will be receiving new tax valuations in October to correct errors in the original valuations done earlier this year. Assessor Leslie Bugg tells KSJD she conducted a full revaluation in order to bring the county into compliance with state law. Bugg, who was previously deputy assessor, was named interim assessor in July after the previous holder of the office, Scott Davis, resigned. She tells KSJD when notices were originally sent in May, some 700 property owners protested their valuations. Those were handled on an individual basis, but when Bugg took office, she notified the state of her concerns that the original valuation had not been done properly. She said, “Our job is to make things fair and equitable across the board, but the previous valuation was not fair and equitable.” She says values were over-inflated in some areas and large neighborhoods were handled as a unit in order to save time. Those mistakes have been corrected in the new valuation. On Monday, Bugg told the county commissioners the overall result was a modest increase in the county’s property values. However, she says it came as a small increase across the board rather than a huge increase for certain owners, as was the case in the original valuation. She adds, “I believe we did the county a real justice by doing that.”

Gail Binkly is a career journalist who has worked for the Colorado Springs Gazette and Cortez Journal, and was the editor of the Four Corners Free Press, based in Cortez.
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