1992-03-23 Regular Meeting - Laserfiche WebLink

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e e CITY OF LA PORTE INTER-OFFICE MEMORANDUM TO: John Joerns, Assistant City Manager FRO~ff Litchfield, Director of Finance DAT~- February 25, 1992 SUBJECT: Review of Street and Alley Closing Sales Price I have completed a review of the current process we use in determining the sales price of public rights-of-way that the City owns when an adjoining property owner requests closure of the property. We currently utilize the method of obtaining the "prime" rate for adjoining property from the Harris County Appraisal District (HCAD) and authorize sale of the property at 150% times the "prime" rate. If either the City or the purchaser disagrees with the sales price, they may, at purchaser's expense, request an appraisal by an independent appraiser. Because of apparent discrepancies between "prime" rates for similar properties and the inadequate response time from HCAD, I was asked to review the process. I contacted Linda Gutierrez, Jurisdiction Support, with HCAD. I was told the following: HCAD does not have a "prime" rate for all properties. They do have a series of different rates that they use to appraise certain, but not all properties. One of the rates does relate to the properties access to major thoroughfares and another relates to "back forty" type of property. She never named the first rate but I assume that is what we call the "prime" rate. The above mentioned rate does not exist for every piece of property in the City, therefore, they sometimes have to create the rate for property when we request a rate. In calculating the "prime" rate for property that we need the rate for, they take into consideration the use or potential use of the property. She specifically mentioned that if the property is surrounded by property owned by one individual, it has a very small market value because the only individual that could feasibly use it would be that one property owner. My observations after talking to Linda were that we have been asking them to perform a service that is outside the scope of our relationship and for which they do not have standard procedures to follow. When asked, she indicated that we are the only entity that requests such service from them.