Fairfax County To Recalculate Disputed 2008 Assessments

"Hindsight is always 20-20," he said, "but it would have been a wise way to go about it."

Griffin said Greenlief's approach might have been technically proficient but was "politically tone-deaf."

"We owe the board an explanation in some detail about what has transpired and why," Griffin said.

Supervisor Catherine M. Hudgins (D-Hunter Mill) said the land valuations threatened to undermine public confidence in the assessment process. That confidence, she said, begins with understanding the system. "Right now, I have a lot of constituents who don't understand."

Some Fairfax homeowners said this week that they suspected the county might have been using the spike in land values to retain revenue. The accusation was denied by tax officials, who said revenue is determined by applying the tax rate to overall assessments, which are down.

Some residents remained puzzled yesterday about anomalies in the assessments. Not everyone whose land value increased saw the total assessment decrease. John A. Messore's four-bedroom home in Burke Centre remained at $621,300, but the relative values of the home and the land shifted by $100,000. Land that was assessed at $174,000 in 2007 is now $274,000. The home is down from $447,300 to $347,300.

"It's really strange how this was done, how they finagled it," Messore said. "They swapped $100,000 from the building to the land but kept the [overall property] the same."

Connolly said he received the same surprise as thousands of other homeowners when he learned that the lot he owns adjacent to his Mantua home had appreciated 45 percent. "I'm in there with everybody else," he said, adding that the first call he received about the problem was not from a concerned constituent but from his wife.