St. John Resident Expresses Frustration with Revaluations

Editor:

Here is my ongoing experience with the Tax Assessor Office.

Because of numerous errors with my inspection/evaluation, I had a meeting at the Battery on October 9, 2007. Before the meeting, I had documented two pages of corrections (measurements, number and type of rooms, etc.) which I gave to an employee named Kai. Errors included house description as one-bedroom, one-bath, two-family duplex, with 2,022 square feet of living space, if you can imagine any of those simultaneous impossibilities. I went home and wrote down about a page-worth of minutes of the meeting. Among other things, Kai promised a re-inspection in one to two weeks. I didn’t hear a peep for four months.

When I looked at the database recently, none of the changes had been put in. So on February 20, I sent a certified letter to V.I. Office of the Tax Assessor, 18 Kongens Gade, St. Thomas, VI 00802, enclosing a copy of the corrections and the notes of the meeting with Kai. The letter was received and signed for February 25. On February 27, Kai called me up and made an appointment. He is allegedly coming to re-inspect.

Kai told me that he would try to correct the factual errors, but would not be able to change the evaluation. This makes very little sense. However, at least I am on record, via the letter, that if the evaluation remains ridiculous I will formally contest it.

Most disturbing, there is now a note on my record in the data base that states, “Property data information updated on February 23.” I can see no changes from over a year ago, even though I thoroughly documented the numerous errors and handed them to Kai in a meeting. This note is a complete fabrication! Nothing was updated! It looks to me like they put that message in as proof that they had actually done a revaluation, even though they had done nothing at all! I hope other people don’t have the same experience. Check the records for yourself. The Web site is http://public.usvi.cavucorp.com/main.asp. Obviously, beware of the Tax Assessor Office claiming they have corrected errors on your revaluation/assessment.

I urge anyone with problems to document them as fully as you can and send a certified letter to the above address. I hope this will help everyone.

Gerry Hills
Upper Carolina