Joel, please contact me directly and we can figure out what happened and what might be done.  My e-mail is dness at duluthmn.gov.

There is always an appeal process if you believe that your property is over valued in the appraisal process.

Often times when I've seen large percentage increases like this it is almost always the case that the property was severely under valued previously.  When a property is sold, it provides the most accurate market value possible (i.e. the actual sale price).

For example, I've seen lots that had a taxable value of $1000, but then they sell for $20,000 because that is what the buyer was willing to pay for it.  So is that a 2000% valuation increase or is it a correction of a valuation that proved to be 95% too low?

The final point that I will make is that there is no financial benefit to the corporate city in changing property values - the city does not receive more taxes.

Instead, the city (and county and school district) establishes the set amount of taxes that will be collected next year and will apply that amount against the total tax base which then creates the tax rate applied to the value of each property.

If properties are under valued, the city still receives the same taxes, however, other property owners who are correctly assessed would be paying more than their fair share because others are under assessed.

This is way too much detail to share here and much too little detail to accurately describe it. I think I just found a good Nerd Night subject.

The final comment is of course Duluth is not unique in this -- all of those magical suburban communities deal with the same assessment issues. The rule is the same; property must be assessed at it's fair market value -- if not, someone else is making up the difference.