Madison County NC Commissioners- Jeremy Hensley, Bill Briggs, Alan Wyatt, Michael Garrison, and Matt Wechtel maliciously and purposefully delayed County property bills until after the election.
Madison County residents received their tax bills in the mail on Saturday. Conveniently, Monday was a holiday, and the Madison County Government was closed. Are you catching on?
This is the same type of scam that Diana Norton, the tax office, Donny Laws, and all these commissioners played on you when you received your reevaluation notices in July.
Below is the notice of the Board of Equalization process; it ends in ten days. If you want to challenge your bill, you better get an email out immediately to the tax office, all commissioners, Honeycutt and the county attorney. It is important at this point to document everything.
See below for all of their emails.
- Jeremy Hensley jeremyhensley@madisoncountync.gov
- Alan Wyatt awyatt@madisoncountync.gov
- Bill Briggs bbriggs@madisoncountync.gov
- Michael Garrison michaelgarrison@madisoncountync.gov
- Matt Wechtel mwechtel@madisoncountync.gov
- Rod Honeycutt rhoneycutt@madisoncountync.gov
- Diana Norton dsnorton@madisoncountync.gov
- Donny Laws – county attorney donnyjoellawsattorney@gmail.com
Many of the bills received on Saturday did not reflect the appealed numbers. Some of these bills are missing and do not reflect the bank mortgage on the bill, which has been common in the past. It is a huge incompetent mess implemented by this corrupt government and its employees.
I tried to warn you before about what these Republican Commissioners were up to and how they have protected their Republican buddies over in Mars Hill.
The classifications of properties for the Chair to the Republican Party Commissioners -Matt Wechtel’s subdivision “Seven Glens” and Wolf Laurel’s subdivision—are classed as RURAL VACANT, which automatically gives these homeowners a substantially lower taxed value than everyone else in Madison County.
The NC Machinery Act forbids this. Taxation is to be uniform and not abused by incompetent tax employees who want to preserve their jobs.
The Republican Party did this before when Bill Briggs was County Clerk of Courts. Briggs abused his position, which is when he showed up for work.
He placed Republican Magistrates who were unqualified and instructed them to use their positions to thwart NC LAW and to get even with Democrats they had contempt for by issuing bogus summons and warrants.
It was the Wild West when this moron was in charge of the courts.
I sent a notice to the NCDOR and my liaison, whom I have contacted about the problems in Madison County. I asked about the county’s decision not to send out Tax Bills in September before an election in which the chair and vice chair ran as incumbents.
Below is the response and also a response from Chris McLaughlin from the Institute of Government
I am copying this response to Chris McLaughlin, a professor of public law and ethics with the UNC School of Government at Chapel Hill. Mr. McLaughlin’s vast experience with property tax collection .matters has established him as the preeminent authority in this subject area.
To the larger question you ask, N.C.G.S. 105-348, enacted many decades ago provides the following as a presumptive notice to all property owners:
“All persons who have or who may acquire any interest in any real or personal property that may be or may become subject to a lien taxes are hereby charged with notice that such property is or should be listed for taxation, that taxes are or may become a lien thereon, and that if taxes are not paid the proceedings allowed by law may be taken against such property. This notice shall be conclusively presumed, whether or not such persons have actual notice.”
I have been involved in various capacities associated with property taxes since 1972, and I’m not aware of any North Carolina county having decided to not send a tax bill to the owners of taxable property.
Given that all counties depend on the receipt of property tax payments to cover budgeted expenses occurring currently, I’m confident Madison officials want to see all matters related to the 2024 reappraisal and mailing of those tax bills resolved as soon as possible.
Response from Chris McLaughlin:
North Carolina state law does not require property tax bills to be mailed by a certain date. As the statute references makes clear, tax bills (“actual notice”) are not required at all. For many good and obvious reasons, all jurisdictions that levy property taxes mail tax bills every year, usually in the late summer. Failure to do will hurt the jurisdiction’s finances in that collections will be late and perhaps lower. But that failure is not a violation of law.
The Machinery Act does make reference in GS 105-321(c) to “tax receipts” being delivered by the board to the tax collector by September 1. I admit I’m not exactly sure what the phrase “tax receipts” means, but I think it references the details of the tax assessment for each property needed by the tax collector to create tax bills. However, even if we interpret “tax receipts” to mean “tax bills,” GS 105-321 does not require the tax collector to mail those receipts to taxpayers by a certain date (and in fact makes no reference to mailing the receipts to taxpayers at all).
The bottom line: the failure to send tax bills in a timely fashion is an administrative and (potentially) a political problem, but not a legal one.
Best,
Chris McLaughlin
Christopher B. McLaughlin (he/him/his)Professor of Public Law and GovernmentSchool of GovernmentThe University of North Carolina at Chapel HillCampus Box 3330, Knapp-Sanders BuildingChapel Hill, NC 27599-3330919.843.9167 www.sog.unc.edu
Ok, folks, the bottom line is this corrupt Republican county government found a way to screw the taxpayers in Madison County. If they were so confident that they were going to be be elected then why wait till after the election to send out tax bills?
See what runs the Madison County GOP
This is up on the Madison GOP’s FaceBook site, marked private- which comically speaks volumes…
At this point, it is up to you to decide. I know what I will do, but you must care for yourselves.
If you went through the first process with Tyler Technologies and had your values changed, I advise you to go to the Madison County Tax website and screenshot your new tax assessment.
Next, DOCUMENT EVERYTHING, and that means don’t trust any county employee or any commissioner. Tape all conversations; you can legally do this in NC if you are a part of the conversation. It is time to take the gloves off and fight for your property rights against these reprobates who are destroying your county right before your eyes.
Tonight, these commissioners have their regular monthly meeting; you can go and publicly let them know how you feel about what they have done under the venue of “Public Comment,” in this meeting, see below AGENDA
I have no illusions about any of these five men. They freely beat the Jesus Fish to get elected, which, honestly, folks, speaks for itself. How do you proclaim to be honorable when all five of you have been involved in this deceit?
I think they only care about the rot they hang with, which proves their unfitness for office. We need new leadership outside both parties. This county needs a good old-fashioned enema, but it will remain the same until you speak up.
Madison County residents and taxpayers not on the Agricultural Welfare and Mars Hill Swell lists will be significantly burdened this Christmas.
Hensley and his comrades’ taxes have gone down. These commissioners and Republican Buddies will have more candy in their stockings this year, but you won’t. Now, what happens when these crooks raise the millage next year? Think about it…
The simple answer is, how do you trust them from this point on?- CH
Below is from Asheville Watchdog- FEMA HELP. This starts today and through the 15th
Local homeowners who lost their homes or sustained serious damage in Helene’s floodwaters can begin applying next week to a federal program that may buy the home outright, or pay to have it elevated or rebuilt at a higher level.
Steve McGugan, the state of North Carolina’s Hazard Mitigations section chief, explained at the Buncombe County Tropical Storm Helene briefing Friday how the FEMA program works.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency provides the funding for the program, called the Hazard Mitigation Program, which the state administers.
Residents can apply for the program starting Tuesday at the FEMA location at Asheville Mall in the former Gap store location, across from Bath & Body Works. Staff will be on location from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Tuesday through Friday, Nov. 12-15.
“We will have a team there that will be able to answer questions, help assist you in filling out a paper application form where we get all your information,” McGugan said. “We’ll also go ahead and check your tax card to make sure we have all the proper names that need to be on the application, and signatures that we will need. We will also verify where you are located within the flood zone.”
FEMA provides funding to the state, which then flows to the community.
In Buncombe, 900 homes had substantial damage from Helene, with about 300, including 75 commercial properties, totally lost, according to Buncombe County.
Three types of assistance
The program offers three types of assistance:
Acquisition: “If your property has been severely damaged and you are located in a flood hazard area and wish to relocate from that flood hazard area, you can sign up for the acquisition program,” McGugan said. “In the acquisition program, your home would be bought just as if you were selling it to another homeowner, and moving away.”
The property would be appraised based on its value the day before the storm struck, in part based on the tax valuation. That gives a base value to work from, and appraisers will also use a “multiplier” provided by the county for homes whose valuations likely have increased, he noted. Additionally, they look at comparable homes that sold before the storm hit to arrive at the appraised amount.
Upon the home’s closing, “our closing official or a closing company would basically pay off your loan, if you have a loan on the house remaining, and then the proceeds would then be handed over to you, just like a normal acquisition process,” McGugan said.
“Once that’s completed, that property would then be deeded over to the county, and the county would retain that property,” McGugan continued. “And that property would not be available to be reoccupied or be reused for housing, but in the future the county can use those properties for such things as parks, greenways, other things in their future plan that benefit the community, as well as assist in being able to prevent future flood damages from occurring.”
Raising the home: Called “Elevations,” this program is basically what it sounds like: lifting the home, typically by 2 feet, to raise it out of the flood zone.
“An elevation project is done when your home may have had a little bit of water on the first floor — one or two feet,” McGugan said.
He showed a home before and after — on a lower brick foundation when it flooded, and then raised to a higher concrete block foundation.
“You would move out of the home — and when I say move out, we will provide you temporary lodging while the construction process takes place,” McGugan said. “You don’t have to move any household goods out, because we pick the house up as is.”
The program can accommodate homes with Americans with Disabilities Act provisions.
Mitigation reconstruction: “Mitigation reconstruction is done when first you requested an elevation, and we came in and determined that your home may be more damaged than was thought, and we cannot safely lift it and elevate it to the new height,” McGugan said.
“The old house would be torn down, a new foundation built that, again, is at an elevated level, and then a new home is built in place of the old home,” McGugan said, noting that these are not custom homes but contractor grade.
The state would “move your furniture back in, set it back up, and you would move back in again,” McGugan said.
What about the cost?
McGugan stressed that there is no cost to homeowners for these programs. For example, on acquisition, FEMA pays 75 percent of the cost to acquire and demolish the property and restore the property to green space. The state pays the other 25 percent.
“There is no cost to the homeowner for this program,” McGugan said.
Are most applications accepted?
McGugan said that a very high percentage of applications are accepted. He noted that since Hurricane Florence struck North Carolina in 2018, “if a homeowner has applied and stayed with us and did not walk away from the program, we have been able to complete their home.”
The program is voluntary, and homeowners can walk away at any point, he said, but the success rate in getting applications approved is very high.
“I will tell you that at this point, I have never not been able to get a home approved,” McGugan said. “There are many rules that go with this program and many ways that we can work together in the application to always meet a benefit-cost ratio of one, which is requirement for FEMA to approve it — that we show that the benefit-cost ratio of doing an acquisition or an elevation or a mitigation reconstruction is one.”
The state has “a lot of tools” to reach that level.
“So I have not had any denied based upon the value of a home,” McGugan said. “Really, the only thing that prevents a home from being approved is if there are issues with the title — we can’t get a clear title.”
Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. John Boyle has been covering Asheville and surrounding communities since the 20th century. You can reach him at (828) 337-0941, or via email at jboyle@avlwatchdog.org. The Watchdog’s local reporting during this crisis is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.