ORANGE BEACH, Ala. — Orange Beach City Councilman Brett Holk is on a mission. It is a mission that brought applause from citizens who attended Tuesday night’s city council meeting, and resulted in action from the elected city leaders.

After doing some research, Holk discovered that all Class 3 residential properties within the city of Orange Beach have a 10 percent market adjustment increase on their property taxes.

A Class 3 residence is a single-family, owner-occupied residential property.  The 10 percent markup, however, does not apply to condominiums. 

When a house is appraised, a square footage for the cost basis on the quality of the house is established. 

Then a house is marked up based on amenities such as number of bathrooms or hardwood floors among others. The house is then marked up based on the state average, and homes in Baldwin County are marked up another 16 percent.

After all of this is figured, a depreciation value is established.

But Holk discovered something interesting. According to Holk, there are other cities in Baldwin County with certain subdivisions where markups occur, but his investigation shows that Orange Beach is the only city where every house is marked up another 10 percent.

“Now, Craft Farms is marked up 10 percent like Orange Beach, the Peninsula is marked up 20 percent, Kiva Dunes gets marked up 30 percent. But the houses all the way down Fort Morgan are not marked up at all. The cities of Fairhope and Spanish Fort are not marked up. Basically, Orange Beach is the only town in the county where all houses are marked up 10 percent,” Holk said.

Holk says it is completely unfair if you were going to build a house in Gulf Shores that costs $400,000 it would cost 10 percent more to build the identical house in Orange Beach.

The research Holk has done shows it is only Class 3 residential houses that get marked up. Condominiums do not get the same markup by the county.

Holk says that it shows on your property tax bill what your depreciated value is, then there is a 10 percent markup for the final value.

“I’ve been told that the state puts it on the county, and the county, in return, puts it on Orange Beach,” Holk said.

Holk has tried to get answers from Baldwin County property appraiser Walt Lindsey, as well as Kerry Tubbs with the Alabama Department of Revenue Property Tax Division but to no avail.

Calls made by The Islander to Lindsey and Tubbs were not returned, and Holk said he invited county officials to Tuesday’s meeting but nobody showed up.

The council passed Tuesday a resolution to support having the 10 percent market adjustment increase removed.

“What we are asking with this resolution is simply to not do it to us anymore,” Holk said. “They didn’t do it in 2006, but they added it in 2007 and 2008.”

The city plans to contact county and state tax officials, county commissioners, and the governor with a copy of the resolution in addition to a letter from Mayor Tony Kennon.

“The thing is, you wouldn’t notice this unless you just happened to sit and do some figuring as I did on mine,” Holk said.

“If what we are concluding is true, there is just no logic behind what they are doing,” Kennon said. “We may end up writing a bunch of letters to a bunch of people until we get this resolved.”