To the editor:

After reviewing the latest assessment on my home, I guess I should shout in celebration that for the first time in the six years I’ve lived in Lawrence, it didn’t go up; it remained the same. Yet nationally, home prices fell by an average of 11 percent. Have I really been lucky enough to choose the one city in the entire nation that is immune to the fall in real estate prices?

Should I accept my assumption that the assessed value of property in Douglas County depends more on how much money the county wants to raise than the actual market value of our homes? Or should I just chalk it up to an incompetence in the county assessor’s office driven by a state law that only requires them to be within $20,000 on a $200,000 home to be in compliance?

Donald Whiteley,
Lawrence