STUART — Martin County officials breathed a slight sigh of relief last week when the county’s taxable value came in. It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t as bad as expected.

Then they discovered it was wrong.

Property Appraiser Laurel Kelly, who released the county’s tax roll last week, learned this week that a computer programming glitch had changed the calculation for the value of new construction. That error led to other problems in the calculation.

The end result? The county’s taxable value may not be $18.7 billion as reported. That number is used by the county, municipalities, school district and other taxing districts to determine what tax rates will be applied to property values to collect taxes for 2009-2010. And in a year when every dollar matters, even a slight difference could affect budgets and tax rates for the coming year.

“Every little tick of that register makes a big financial impact,” said Commissioner Ed Ciampi.

In this case, commissioners thought, based on July’s incorrect figure, that they had about $600,000 more for their proposed $345.6 million budget for the coming year than June’s estimate had indicated. Now it’s unclear what effect this will have.

Kelly wouldn’t say whether she expects the tax roll to go up or down.

County officials said the problem is unlikely to delay budget hearings scheduled at the end of the month, however, and Kelly expects the correct figure by Monday, if not sooner.

Kelly’s office upgraded its computer software last year; that process was about 75 percent complete by this year, she said.

With changes in the way the state collects real estate information, completion of software upgrades and declining property values in the county, Kelly said many programming changes had to be made in a short time this year. She believes that led to the error.

“It left us less time to find potential problems,” she said. “But I don’t want to be blaming it on programmers. The bottom line is I’m the property appraiser and the buck stops here. I will get it taken care of.”

Tags: Economy, Martin County, Stuart

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