The Swartz Report: Celebrating our 6th Anniversary

We recently celebrated Father’s Day weekend and Juneteenth! I feel like Jimmy Kimmel and Steven Colbert as I write yet another blog from my home. The more things change, the more things remain the same……

Celebrating our 6th Anniversary

We celebrated the 6^th anniversary of Swartz + Associates, Inc. on June 1^st without much (in fact, without any) fanfare. Just another day of dealing with frustrating circumstances. Hearings held virtually or via telephone only; little interaction with respective appraisers’ offices; almost no interaction with county Boards and worrying about our clients and their abilities to remain upbeat and run functioning businesses.

There are some positive things occurring as well. In the past week, we have been working with Jackson County on our outstanding commercial real estate appeals. While we still have many properties to discuss, we were able to discuss and resolve 10 properties. At this rate, it will take quite a while to complete the 2019 hearings, but we know the county is working with us to resolve outstanding appeals and remain cautiously optimistic the number of cases to be reviewed by the county will only increase.

Another positive is the comfort level our staff has felt in working remotely. While the office is technically open, I have encouraged everyone to work in an environment that best suits their needs. If they want to come into the office, it is available to them (minus the break room).  This has worked out well as a few of us come in a few hours each week. This past Thursday, we had 4 in the office at the same time and it was nice to have some work oriented interactions.

Conversely, working remotely has not slowed us down at all and I believe has helped in our efficiency. As a group, we are meeting off site next week to discuss the past 3 months and making plans for the rest of the year. What will work look like? What is the importance of being in the office? Are we taking care of our clients? How will proper social distancing affect our abilities to have an “off site” half day meeting? These are issues l look forward to discussing with our group and receiving their input.

On the Las Vegas front, Indurante & Associates continues to charge along.

We recently completed the majority of 2020 property tax filings and now are reviewing assessment notices to ensure accuracy and correct methodology. We will be filing obsolescence appeals in those states which allow this argument and we recently discovered a calculation error by a State which assesses property tax on railcars. Alerting the State of this error caused the State to reissue assessment notices for all taxpayers (regardless of whether they were our clients), creating a combined tax savings of well over $500,000.

We did this at no extra charge to our clients, further cementing our reputation as the leading provider of railcar property tax services in the country. I will be talking more about this in a future post and announcement. I am very proud of our group, and would like to recognize Mark Phillips, senior analyst, for discovering the error and working with the state to make the corrections, ultimately benefiting all taxpayers.

As always, if you have any questions or comments please reach out to me directly – .