The Property Taxes’ll Kill You

A house erroneously valued at $400 million is being blamed for budget shortfalls and possible layoffs in municipalities and school districts in northwest Indiana.

An outside user of Porter County’s computer system may have accidentally changed the value of the $121,900 Valparaiso house, triggering the mess, said Sharon Lippens, director of the county’s information technologies and service department.

County Treasurer James Murphy said the home usually carried about $1,500 in property taxes; this year, it was billed $8 million.

The homeowner, Dennis Charnetzky, declined to comment.

Lippens said her agency identified the mistake and told the county auditor’s office how to correct it. But the $400-million value ended up on documents that were used to calculate taxes.

Most local officials did not learn about the mistake until last week, when 18 government taxing units were asked to return a total of $3.1 million of tax money. The city of Valparaiso and the Valparaiso Community School Corp. were asked to return $2.7 million. As a result, the school system has a $200,000 budget shortfall, and the city loses $900,000.

Officials struggled to figure out how the mistake got into the system and how it could have been prevented. The error could necessitate layoffs and other cost cuts, city leaders said Thursday.

Lippens said an outside user of the county’s enhanced access system probably changed the property value inadvertently while trying to access another program.