St. Joseph County officials are still trying to assess an apparent reassessment problem.

One that produced bad property tax bills for many Clay Township businesses.

In the words of the Clay Assessor, many of the bills are “wrong.”

For instance, a video rental store on State Road 933 recently saw its assessment and tax bill more than double.

While Family Video is one of four businesses on the corner of 933 and Auten Road, the other three businesses saw their tax bills decrease.

Today brought some discussions on the best way to handle such situations.

That might involve pressing on with individual appeals, or taking a more comprehensive approach.

“We have a couple of options, depending on the number of properties involved in the problems,” said St. Joseph County Assessor Dave Wesolowski.

Wesolowski hopes to decide by the end of the week whether the an equalization study will be used to address the situation.

Such a study would expand the use of real estate sales data to better determine the market value of a given property.

If the situation results in the lowering of a lot of tax bills, various units of local government would have to bite the bullet.

Many of the tax dollars in question are shared by schools, townships, and by St. Joseph County government.

Some say the City of Mishawaka has the most to lose, because a number of businesses are in the Grape Road area.

Mishawaka does not rely on those tax dollars for day to day operations. Grape Road is part of a TIF District, that pays for public improvement projects.