County Commissioner Steve White is getting a little worn out taking calls about skyrocketing home values and the increased taxes that come with them.

Home prices in some areas of the county have gone up 60 percent or more over the past two years, and while tax entities are forbidden from grabbing extra dollars on that increase without a hearing, taxes can still go up. That's because other properties may rise less quickly or even go down.

"It's a wash countywide but not on the individual property," White said.

So he is backing the efforts of Sen. Dennis Stowell, R-Parowan, who wants to change state law regarding how properties are taxed. The plan is based around setting property values on an five-year rolling average instead of going year to year.

That, says White and Stowell, will take the peaks and valleys out of assessments, provide a fairer picture of market value and take the pressure off taxpayers to come up with huge money in a hurry if their property values shoot through the roof one year.

"We're not saying that you won't go up ever," White said. "We're trying to level out the increases so we don't have senior citizens in trouble."

Stowell's concern is that just a few homes selling at an inflated price shouldn't run up the cost for the rest of the neighborhood. Taking a five-year average would show if those sales were just an anomaly or part of a larger trend.

"I don't think those peaks represent fair market value," he said. "What we need to do is determine fair market value over a matter of time."

It may also give property owners a cushion when home sales aren't legit. Home values throughout the Riverbottoms neighborhood in Provo shot up this year, in large part because of an alleged home flipping scheme that illegally inflated prices of several of the homes.

While county assessors are required to physically value a house every five years, the other four years they use a variety of formulas, including home sales, to determine the value.

Stowell has asked Utah and Iron counties to refigure taxes this year using a five-year average after they're done figuring them for real. If the numbers show no adverse effects, Stowell could take it into the 2008 legislative session.

"We won't make a decision about this until we can see more information about it," he said.

Until then, assessors like Utah County's Kris Poulson are looking for ways to keep up not only with housing prices, but the actual number of houses.

The number of taxable parcels in the county has gone up 7,000-8,000 per year for the past five years, creating a heavy burden on exiguous staff. To make things easier, the county has purchased a software system designed around aerial photos of the county. The company behind the system, Pictometry, takes five photos of a neighborhood, roughly corresponding to the four sides of the property, plus directly down. That allows assessors to measure within half of a foot the size of the home and get a feel for the property in relation to the neighborhood.

"This has been like a drug for my staff," Poulson said.

The cost of the system is about $100,000 a year, about what it would cost for 1.5 more assessors who still couldn't do the same amount of work being done with the mapping program, Poulson said.

All those new homes have been considered when kicking around the new tax policy. A new home would be assessed based on sale price the first year, then an average would be taken between the first and second year and so on until it was also in the five year rolling average.