KSHB 41 reporter Rachel Henderson covers issues in Wyandotte and Leavenworth counties. Send Rachel a story idea.
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Jackson County’s property assessment saga has residents across the metro looking into their values, including those in Wyandotte County who have been vocal about experiencing high property taxes and assessment values for the past few years.
To Sylvia Vobornik, her home is more than just a house.
“I grew up in this house,” Vobornik said. “I was here when I was little, and now I’m here when I’m 78.”
At 109 years old, this house is practically a landmark.
“I was here for the race riots in the 60s,” Vobornik said.
But now, she said Wyandotte County’s property taxes and appraisal values have gotten too high.
“I don’t like it that somebody can drive by here and, ‘Yeah, it looks cute on the outside,’ and up it $40,000 or up it $28,000,” Vobornik said.
Matthew Willard, Wyandotte County appraiser, said it’s not exactly like that.
State statute mandates the appraiser's office visits a home every six years, but Willard said his team visits every five years because of the size of his team.
“Restricted supply and historic demand,” Willard said. “That is, just not enough houses to go around for people wanting to buy. We’re still in a housing market in Kansas City that’s still very tight supply, low supply, still reasonable demand.”
Williard said that’s what’s causing a jump in prices people like Vobornik are seeing.
“What we have seen and continue to see is, from the peak, where it was big increases, it’s returning to a more moderate pace, but values are still increasing,” Willard said. “I definitely understand the concern, the fear, and that’s why we want to be available and do everything we can to help with it, within our power.”
Earlier in the year, his office hosted a series of community meetings for the public to ask questions and voice their concerns about their appraisal values.
Though there are not any currently scheduled, he still encourages residents to appeal values they believe are inaccurate.
“I take it very seriously," Willard said. "So, the idea that, ‘Oh, the appraiser is just raising the values to get more money,’ that’s just not how it works."
Willard said while the Unified Government is the organization his office falls under, appraiser independence is something that allows him to work independently from the UG.
He also added that people often confuse taxing entities like the school district or community college — which dictate property taxes — for his office, which sets an appraised value and assessed value, which is a percentage of that.
“Once we set the values and passed them on, it’s up to the taxing jurisdictions to work through the rest of the process,” Willard said.
Vobornik said she’s attended a public meeting before, but it didn’t turn out how she’d hoped.
“Now that appraiser said at that meeting, 'Now if you’ve got horizontal cracks, we need to know about it,'” she said. “Well, I do have some horizontal cracks.”
She also has broken ceilings.
And weathered siding.
The only thing is, she can’t afford to fix it.
“It’s demanded of me that I get this stuff fixed when I can’t fix it,” Vobornik said. “I think of all the other old people around here, they don’t have the money to keep this stuff up.”
In ways, Vobornik said the appraisal process feels like a Catch-22. An expensive one, at that.
“See, I have these boxes ‘cause I’m thinking about moving out of here for a while,” she said. “They’re gonna run me out with taxes.”
Despite Wyandotte County being her home for decades, she can’t see any alternative besides leaving behind what’s been such a large part of her life.
At this rate, she can only afford to keep her memories.
“Well, it’s not something that I want to do, but eventually, I have to,” she said. “When the day comes that you have to think about it, it’s a different story.”
On top of that, she said with weathered sidewalks, no grocery store and few amenities, she’s not sure she’d be leaving behind much more than her memories.
“Why not leave?” she asked. “‘'If we don’t raise your taxes, you’re gonna lose city services.' Well, hello? What city services are there?”
But Willard doesn’t want to see a county people can’t afford to stay in.
“That’s absolutely not the goal,” Willard said about people leaving Wyandotte County due to high values. “Our mandate here is to appraise at fair market value, and so that’s what we’ve got to do.”
Williard said there are some rumors he’s heard that he wants to debunk.
If there’s an extra room in a person’s house his office didn’t know about when they go to the house, they’re not allowed to raise the value based on that, according to state statute.
Another is if people have troubles with their house, they’re going to get transmitted to code enforcement. However, Willard ensures that doesn’t happen according to their policy.
Those rumors typically run hand-in-hand with distrust of government offices like his, something he said he wants to combat.
“We see it,” Willard said. “I don’t necessarily understand where it comes from. That’s part of the reason that we’ve been doing the public meetings as frequently as we’ve been doing them, is just to put a name with a face.”
His office recently received results from a 2023 ratio study from the state, which says an acceptable range for an appraising entity to be is between 90 and 110 percent of fair market value on sales.
The Wyandotte County Appraiser’s Office typically runs in the low 90s and was around 93% in 2023.
“Even with these big increases, and they absolutely are impactful, we’re still on the low-end of that acceptable range,” Willard said.
He said the county’s website has information on what makes for a successful appeal. Also, his office will provide sales data for people who want to appeal.
The sales data Willard showed KSHB 41's Rachel Henderson from 2020 to 2024 captured the five-year period when he said these recent increases really started.
In addition to people renovating or updating their homes because of COVID-19, he attributed a slow response to the 2008 recession as causation for the current trends.
“We really did have about 10 years where it didn’t matter if it was a single-family residence, apartments, and this was almost nationwide, nothing new went up,” Willard said. “And I think that’s a big part of the reason I think we’re at where we’re at now with the supply issue.”
As for an immediate fix for people seeing lower values, Willard said that’s unlikely unless the market changes.
He is, however, encouraging people to reach out to his office in the meantime to appeal or pay under protest in November and December.
“If we’ve got some data wrong or we’ve got some information that needs to be updated, we want to know about it so we can get it correct, so we can get the best value we can,” he said.
To reach the Wyandotte County Appraiser's Office, you can call 913-573-8400 or email wycoappraiser@wycokck.org.
You can also walk-in at 8200 State Ave. between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.
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