Confusion and outcry after St. Joseph County residents receive property tax assessments

ST. JOSEPH COUNTY, Ind. -- Many property owners in Saint Joseph County are baffled after receiving their property tax assessments! Some are seeing their assessments doubled, or even tripled since last year, and this comes after many say they've already appealed previous assessments.

It's the talk of the town in the county, especially on social media. Hundreds have been sharing their outrageous assessments and asking the same questions: What is going on? Why are so many people seeing such a dramatic increase?

"I was shocked," says Clay Township resident, Mike Psalidas. "It went up almost a hundred thousand dollars." "It went up another 145 thousand dollars," says another Clay Township resident, Jared Basker.

Neighbors Mike Psalidas and Jared Basker are scratching their heads looking at their property tax assessments they got in the mail.
They live on the north side of South Bend right near the state line, in a quaint neighborhood called Claffey's Expansion.

"It's a nice, quiet neighborhood but these homes are all older, they're creeping up on 60, 50, 70 years old even," Basker explains. "There's no reason they should keep going up this substantial amount every year."

They point to the lack of nearby amenities, or public schools even, as the biggest question mark as to where their tax money would be going.

"There's a dollar store, there's no restaurants," Psalidas explains. "In order to get groceries, you got to go to Michigan, or you got to go south."
"The neighborhood school for us is Eggleston, which is abandoned. It's been abandoned for 20 years," Basker explains. "Then they said 'Well, it's going to be for Clay High School'. Okay, that's fine, that's our neighborhood school, it's closest to us. A year later, after raising our taxes, they close Clay. Where's the money going?"

Both Basker and Psalidas are no stranger to appealing their assessments even before this staggering hike. "Last year it went up about 60,000, I appealed it, they called me, we agreed on a price. Everything went fine," Psalidas says. "I've done that for the last four years and everything's been fine, this is the largest increase I've gotten in the almost six years I've been here."

"To have to appeal it every single year, it just gets tiresome," says Basker. "Why do we have to play this game, over and over?"
Not only are they worried about the future of their wallets if something doesn't change, but the future of their neighborhood and surrounding town. "You're going to find people who can't afford houses, people who can't buy houses so they're going to move to a different county, or a different state. Which in turn, is going to turn South Bend into a ghost town," worries Psalidas.

The County Assessor's Office will be holding multiple town hall meetings about property assessments; the first one is on Saturday May 17th at 10am at the Howard Park Event Center.

You can visit the citizen engagement website where you can search addresses and learn more about the appeals process.