Fight for right
TO THE EDITOR:
Hundreds of people responded positively to my Letter to the Editor last year. Through fighting the unfair Bowie County District’s appraisal, I was able to get about an $86,000 reduction in appraisal for our Granary St. Natural Food Store property on New Boston Road for 2018. I want to thank everyone for their support and help in this fight, but unfortunately it is not over. For this year, the BCAD had raised their appraisal of our property back up to over $21,000 more that the arbitrator’s appraisal value for 2018. After pointing out to the BCAD that raising the property value the year after binding arbitration is unlawful, they did back down for now. Why should the average citizen have to make sure they follow the law?
With Internet competition from all over the world, many of our local businesses are being squeezed out of business with excessive property taxes. Other than a few exceptions like the Richmond Road/ Summerhill areas, there are many vacant buildings where once thriving businesses have gone out of business. With big stores like the Walmart Super Center on New Boston Road paying a fraction per square foot of floor area that we do and other powerful people like the county judge paying about a third of the amount per acre in property taxes than the owners of properties next door or across the street, is it any wonder more and more businesses in Bowie County are failing?
The BCAD has made it almost impossible for the average citizen to fight their unfair appraisals. They use our own tax money to overwhelm us and from my experience, if you don’t know the laws, they will not follow them to make you succumb to unfair taxes. How ironic? And if you dare oppose them, they go after you year after year as you can see. It does take a lot of time and some money, but at least we do have remedies available. And Texas law says that in ALL disputes between property owners and appraisal districts, the appraisal district has the “burden of proof.”
We Texans have an outstanding history of fighting for what is right. If we don’t continue to fight for what is right, you and all our future generations lose. It is really that simple. Robert Worthen Texarkana, Texas