by David Flint
Stephentown’s Sole Assessor Tom MacVeigh announced at a special Town Meeting Monday evening that impact notices will be sent out on March 1 to property owners indicating how the Revaluation has affected their assessments. Available to answer questions along with MacVeigh were Stephen Peluso, Customer Relationship Manager from the State Office of Real Property Services (ORPS) and Frank Curtis, Rensselaer County Director of Real Property.
MacVeigh said he had been collecting and analyzing data for the past three years and the new preliminary tax rolls have now been sent to the State for review. If no changes are made, the County will then send out the impact notices along with a letter that will show the property’s new assessed value and the difference from last year’s assessment. It will also show the 2008 County, Town and school taxes compared with what they would have been with the new assessment. An attached letter from the Assessor will break out the assessment on land separately from house structures. Also included will be a form for requesting an informal hearing if taxpayers question the assessment.
These informal hearings will be held from March 9 through March 27. No determinations will be made at the hearings, but arguments will be heard and considered, and a revised tentative tax roll will be issued on May 1. Taxpayers who disagree with their assessment on this roll can argue their case before the Board of Assessment Review (BAR) on Grievance Day scheduled for Wednesday, May 27. The roll will be final on July 1, but those who disagree with the BAR’s determination can still take their case to small claims court.
Peluso explained that part of the State’s role in this is to set equalization rates which indicate at what percentage of market value the local jurisdiction is assessing properties. The State sets these rates by drawing samples of residential property sales – “arms length” transfers, not sales between relatives. Stephentown’s equalization rate is currently 30%. After revaluation the rate will be in the neighborhood of 100%. But going to 100%, he said, won’t mean that the Town picks up a heavier share of the County or School District tax burden, as the equalization rates should even things out.
The revaluation process is revenue neutral, he said. You won’t necessarily pay more taxes because your assessment goes up. It is intended to be a redistribution of the tax burden with all properties being uniformly assessed.
Although the level of assessment in Stephentown is 30%, MacVeigh said that in his data collection and analysis he had found that about 95% of residential properties had an assessed value less than 30% of market value.
Some mentioned that revaluation had recently been completed in Schodack, East Greenbush and Sand Lake and that most taxpayers in those towns appeared to be very unhappy with the results. MacVeigh acknowledged that there had been problems but noted that an outside company had been brought in to carry out those revaluations and taxpayers there “didn’t have the personal input you have from me.” He also pointed out that he has 33 years of experience and is now about to complete his third revaluation.
But any revaluation will be stressful for some. This happens especially when property values in certain parts of a town increase drastically for some reason. In Sand Lake, for instance, people who had bought lakefront property years ago now found that they were sitting on very valuable property and their assessments had gone through the roof. Although there is no comparable situation in Stephentown, MacVeigh acknowledged that it is sometimes hard for an assessor to sleep at night trying to figure out how to address the problem with people who have lived on a property all their lives, find its value has gone up and now are having difficulty paying their taxes.
Town Councilman PJ Roder wanted to know if it was wise to proceed with revaluation when the housing market is so volatile. MacVeigh responded that that is not the case in Stephentown. The market has slowed up a bit, he said, but it really hasn’t changed much. In any case, he said, if market prices drop 10%, it doesn’t matter. Assessments are still more correct than previously because now they are uniform.