If you see vehicles marked with the Barton County logo roaming about, don’t be surprised, said County Appraiser Barbara Konrade.
Barton County Appraiser’s Office personnel are currently conducting the annual re-inspection of real property throughout the county. This includes residential, commercial and vacant properties.
Konrade said field appraisers have begin working in portions of Great Bend, and will be moving to Claflin and Hoisington. Once these areas are complete, re-inspections will be conducted in rural portions of the county as needed. 
The Barton County Appraiser’s Office is mandated by state statute to physically re-inspect all real property in the county at least once every six years. The purpose of this inspection is to verify that the data is current and represents the property accurately.
The Appraiser’s Office physically inspects approximately 17 percent of the real property located in the county annually, Konrade said. Data is also collected from building permits and parcels that have recently sold. 
Property inspected this year was last examined in 2007.
The effort is just getting underway with only about 400 of the targeted 3,000 properties completed, said Deputy Appraiser Kathy Briney-Wagner. It will likely take into the early fall to finish the re-inspections.
Appraisal visits take only a few minutes, Briney-Wagner said. They take measurements and photos, and look for changes to the property.
Compiled data will be used for the 2014 tax cycle.
The appraiser said the staff conducting these inspections will be wearing county-issued identification badges and will be in county-marked sports-utility vehicles. If the public should have questions, they can call the Appraiser’s Office at 620-793-1821 or e-mail appraiser@bartoncounty.org.