WAILUKU, Maui — A boom in property owners appealing their tax assessments and a lack of quorum on the Real Property Tax Review Board have led to a big backlog of tax-appeal cases, The Maui News reported.

Out of 2,907 appeals filed for 2007, 2,099 are still outstanding — cases the county Finance Department normally would have tried to resolve by the end of the calendar year. But due to board vacancies and an inability to get a quorum, the five-member review board hasn't met to hear appeals since Nov. 7. That's left a lot of property owners hanging.

"People are frustrated and say, 'When is my case going to be heard?' But we have no control over it," said Assistant Property Tax Administrator Scott Teruya.

The review board was hampered by the unexpected resignations of board members last year, he said, and it has taken time for the Mayor's Office to recruit replacements and have them approved by the County Council, he noted.

One new board member was approved by the council earlier this year, and more appointees will be sent to the council for review soon, said Marian Feenstra, executive assistant to the mayor.

Former review board Chairman Bruce Erfer, whose term expired in March, said the board's inability to meet was due partly to the vacancies and partly to sitting members' absences.

But the backlog was caused mainly by a tremendous increase in people appealing their tax assessments, he said.

"The number of appeals went up six times over two years; that's the problem," he said.

The Real Property Tax Division averaged around 400 appeals a year from 2001 to 2005, but the number increased to 1,191 in 2006 and 2,907 in 2007.

Teruya said the county sees a spike in appeals any time the real estate market is in a state of flux. When the market was peaking two years ago, many landowners were upset that their tax assessments were skyrocketing. Now that the market is starting to go down, a landowner might feel an assessment made Dec. 31 is too high, because homes in the neighborhood have been selling for less since then.

"Either it's going up too fast and they don't like it, or if it's going down, they want the most recent sale that happened yesterday as the basis of their claim," Teruya said.

"You frequently expect the rate of appeals to increase at the top part of the cycle, when it's right at the top of the crest and it starts coming down," agreed Finance Director Kalbert Young.

Landowners must pay the full tax bill even if they contest it; if the appeal is granted, they can receive a refund or apply the credit to next year's bill, he noted. The county is making some changes it hopes will cut down on the number of appeals coming before the review board.

Teruya said his office will begin automatically returning applications for appeal from landowners who miss the April 9 deadline. Previously, even late applications were sent to the review board, which had to officially reject the appeal.

"That's what's wasting a lot of processing time," Teruya said.

In addition, the county will begin requiring landowners to appeal only their total property value assessment, instead of separating land and building values, Erfer said.

Land value is calculated as total property value minus the building value, so on properties with very old buildings, the land value appears artificially high, he said.

"It will cut the appeals, I would say, in half," he said.

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