St. Joseph County Assessor Michael Castellon spoke Wednesday
St. Joseph County Assessor Discusses Property Tax Issues
ST. JOSEPH COUNTY, Ind.–St. Joseph County Assessor Michael Castellon held a press conference Wednesday to address 2025 property tax assessments and appeals.
Castellon said some properties are over-assessed while others are under-assessed. He believes there are four main reasons for people in his county dealing with high bills.
He says the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the housing market driving prices to unrealistic values.
“Inflation and rising construction costs have increased the market value of properties across the board,” said Castellon when speaking about the second reason.
“Perhaps most importantly, is the department of local government finance raising the cost tables reflecting four years of inflationary values. Four years of inflationary values were put onto taxpayers in a single year,” said Castellon.
The fourth overarching reason he gave was that, for decades, data was inaccurately collected. Because it was not accurately collected, a true reflection of market values was never obtained during that period.
“For the past two years, I’ve been correcting that imbalance,” said Castellon.
Per state law, he said assessors must value properties using what’s called “mass appraisals,” which helps value large numbers of properties, but also lends itself to various fluctuations in market value and cannot determine the exact value.
He also spoke about the recent bill signed by Governor Mike Braun into law (Senate Bill 1).
“While I appreciate the effort to improve the system, I don’t believe it goes far enough in addressing the issues that matter most to taxpayers like transparency, assessment stability, and fairness,” said Castellon.
Castellon will be talking more about this at town halls coming up in the future.
The town halls will be at the following days and times:
-10 a.m. to noon May 17 in the Howard Park Event Center, 219 S. St. Louis Blvd., South Bend.
-2 to 4 p.m. June 14 in the New Carlisle Public Library, 408 S. Bray St., New Carlisle.
-10 a.m. to noon Sept. 20 in the Walkerton Public Library, 406 Adams St., Walkerton.
-10 a.m. to noon Dec. 13 at Palmer Funeral Home community complex, 601 N. Michigan St., Lakeville.
