NORTH EAST — Property owners in the town of North East take heed — Monday, March 28, is the time to learn about the final stages of the current townwide property reassessment project. A public hearing will be held at the Millerton American Legion Hall Post 178.
The impetus
Town Assessor Katherine Johnson is planning the hearing to inform the public about the reassessment project, which began in 2007 after the town dissolved its agreement with former consultant John Watch of MJW Consultants.
“At that time, the town was just coming out of the last project and was just not happy with the result,” Johnson said. “Many residents were not satisfied and reasoned our data was not properly collected by the previous collector and the town said we had to start from scratch, so we did it ourselves.”
The process
“We hired two local people who knew the town and what they were looking at. They trained with the New York State Office of Real Property Services [ORPS],” Johnson said, adding she started as assessor shortly after. “They visited each property and re-measured things and took new pictures and made sure all the data was updated and correct.”
Inputting the data took more than two years, and it was done “slowly and accurately,” according to the assessor.
Once that was completed, data mailers were sent out to property owners so they could check the information to confirm its accuracy. If there were errors, the town was notified and revisited the property in question before re-entering the data into the system.
The process took time, as the town has 1,896 parcels with the following breakdown: 1,198 residential parcels (including farms with residences); 130 commercial parcels; 527 vacant parcels; and 41 utility and special franchise parcels (like Central Hudson or Verizon).
“It seemed to take longer than I expected, but to do it right I wanted to make sure we reviewed everything,” Johnson said. “Then we reviewed it again after it was inputted, by myself and my assistant, for any errors. Then we reviewed the data mailers again. But it was absolutely worth it, I believe. And now we keep up with any new building in town, and keep in close contact with the building departments in the village and town.”
The details
One of the biggest challenges, according to the assessor, was not knowing what the previous contractor actually assessed, as she said he kept his own records and the town’s records were sometimes missing information. Those discrepancies have since been dealt with.
The assessor’s office did hire two contractors to help review the market and sales analysis. Those two workers were from Equitable Assessments and were former town assessors who worked in Dutchess County.
“We went back four years to see sales similar to our town’s and collected over 100 sales for comparables,” Johnson said. “Which is very good.”
Now the assessor’s office is in the midst of finalizing the results. The public hearing will provide an opportunity to talk to the public about what increases will be seen in the town and village and what those will mean to property owners.
Everything is relative
Johnson stressed a higher assessment won’t necessarily lead to higher taxes down the road.
“If it goes up even a penny people think more taxes, but if all the town goes up 5 percent they won’t see anything because everybody is going up the same amount,” she said. “It will stay the same. It stays relative to everyone else because everyone pays the same proportion. What assessments are telling the tax collector is what proportion of tax levy you are required to pay. So it’s a proportional thing, it’s not based on the whole value; it’s based on the proportion of the value compared to everyone else.”
Johnson added that just as higher taxes are not the goal, neither are higher property evaluations.
“We are not aiming to increase assessments,” she said. “What we want is to get everyone assessed fairly and equitably. We want to make sure everyone is paying what they are supposed to — no more, no less.”
The public hearing is set for Monday, March 28, 7 p.m., at the American Legion Hall on Route 44 in Millerton.
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