You could avoid all that mess by moving to some place like where I live. Housing values have been dropping for the last few years, my real estate taxes actually wend down last year. The accessor's office isn't in a real big hurry to re-evaluate taxes here these days. The only time the taxes has gone up was when some one bought a house and the price was higher then the appraised taxes, and that isn't happening very often.
The sad part of the whole deal is, I'm not sure I can get what I paid for my house 18 years ago, if I wanted to sell it right now. Fortunately, I'm prepared to live here until they drag my dead butt out, I really won't care what my kids get out of the place. Gene