GALVESTON, Texas -- Owners still will owe taxes this year on homes and commercial buildings that were destroyed or damaged by Hurricane Ike.

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Thousands of homes and businesses were destroyed when Hurricane Ike rolled into Galveston.

Tax bills, which will start arriving next week, won’t reflect changes in property value since the hurricane made landfall a little more than a month ago.

In fact, houses and buildings might not be reappraised at all this year if governmental entities in Galveston County don’t agree to pay for the effort.

The residents living on Bolivar Peninsula, San Leon and Bacliff — where all that’s left of some properties is a concrete slab — will be most affected in 2008 if their properties aren’t reappraised, County Judge Jim Yarbrough said.

So far, only county commissioners and the Galveston and Dickinson public school districts have expressed interest in reappraising property, said Ken Wright, the county’s chief appraiser.

The state’s tax code allows local governments in disaster areas to call for reappraisals of damaged property at its market value immediately after the disaster.

The taxing entities have to pay for the cost of the reappraisal. If multiple agencies request reappraisals, they can share the cost.

The new value will be the sum of the home’s value, divided by 255 days pre-Ike, plus the home’s new value, divided by 110 days post-Ike.

A house valued at $100,000 that was destroyed in the hurricane would be taxed at $69,863 using that formula.

If only one entity agrees to the reappraisal, the process could be completed by the end of January when tax bills are due, Wright said, which means homeowners will likely not see a prorated tax bill in 2008.

Cheryl Johnson, the county’s tax assessor-collector, said if a home is reappraised at a lower value than the homeowner was taxed in 2008, the homeowner will be refunded the difference.

If that homeowner’s mortgage company pays the tax bill in full, the homeowner will receive a rebate check. If the homeowner chooses to stretch the payments over the year, the tax assessor’s office will adjust the quarterly payments to reflect the difference, Johnson said.

Homeowners will only get rebates on their 2008 tax bills if a taxing unit calls for the reappraisal before Jan. 1.

Governmental entities have been leery about signing off on the reappraisal because it’s not clear yet how much the process would cost.

Johnson initially told Galveston public school trustees the reappraisal would cost $1 per parcel; on Wednesday, she told them she received bad information, and that the reappraisal could cost as much as $5 per parcel.

At that rate, the school district would spend $250,000 to reappraise properties.

Wright said he expects more taxpayers will protest their appraisals than normally do.

Galveston public school district trustees will vote on the reappraisal Oct. 29. The county commissioners will vote on the reappraisal in the coming weeks once the finance department determines if the county can afford it, Yarbrough said.

Galveston College and the city of Galveston have no immediate plans to vote for a reappraisal.

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By The Book

What the state’s tax code says about reappraisals in disaster areas:

Taxes due on reappraised property damaged in a natural disaster are determined as follows: the taxes on the property based on its value on January 1 of that year are multiplied by a fraction, the denominator of which is 365 and the numerator of which is the number of days before the date the disaster occurred; the taxes on the property based on its reappraised value are multiplied by a fraction, the denominator of which is 365 and the numerator of which is the number of days, including the date the disaster occurred, remaining in the year; and the total of the two amounts is the amount of taxes on the property for the year.