A small town business district is facing big time property tax hikes.

“The fallout could be fairly dramatic if it’s not corrected,” said Jim Christie of Success Realty.

Many Walkerton area businesses saw their assessed values double, while one experienced an increase of 400-percent, according to Phil Buckmaster of the Walkerton Area Economic Development Corporation.

The latest tax bill at Success Realty was somewhere in the middle. “I think a serious error has been made somewhere, I am confident that the error is going to be taken care of,” said owner Jim Christie.

About 45-days ago, Christie says he had just finished appealing the previous year’s tax bill. He and the assessor’s office had mutually agreed on an assessed value of $56,300. “And then the latest tax bill I got, it came in at $163,800,” Christie said.

That represents a 190-percent increase in the assessed value of Success Realty. In turn, the tax bill for the business went up 235 percent, from $1,584 last year to $5,312 this year.

“Speaking for myself,” said Christie, “I can’t afford $5,312 a year in taxes. My guess would be there are other business owners who had an increase of similar nature that would not be able to afford it either.”

Indiana State Representative Jackie Walorski agrees that the situation is serious. “These businesses are going to go out of business, they will shut down—conceivably—the Town of Walkerton and the Town of North Liberty, they’re both dealing with the same thing.”

The assessed value increases are based on the sales prices paid for similar commercial properties elsewhere in St. Joseph County. In a written statement, the St. Joseph County Assessor’s Office indicated that Walkerton didn’t have enough sales of its own to conduct a mass appraising, so a “judgment call was made,” to combine sales data from five townships (Liberty, Lincoln, Olive, Union, and Warren).

The written release states that the five townships have “similar characteristics (such as rural areas that are all under 10,000 parcels and have a high percentage of agriculture) was made, which is acceptable under IAAO standard procedures.”

“It’s not fair to take a little business on Main Street in Walkerton and then look at a property that is up near the IN Tek/ IN Kote plant near New Carlisle, one of the highest priced manufacturing areas, and one of the largest assets we have in St. Joe County and put that in a peer group, it isn’t fair,” said Rep. Walorski.

Many Walkerton area business owners apparently agree. More than 30-business owners have already filed property tax reassessment appeals according to Buckmaster.