Revaluation Approved
by Alex Brooks
At a Special Meeting on November 5, Petersburgh Assessor Craig Surprise spoke to the Board about doing a revaluation of Real Property in the Town, starting more or less right away. Surprise said the last full revaluation was done in 1994, and he was on a program of regular updates subsequent to that, but the last one of those was done in 2000, because the State stopped providing funding for the updates at that time. Surprise said after 18 years the Town is due for a revaluation. He said he wanted to do one earlier but the effects of the nationwide financial crisis in the years following 2009 and then the local PFOA crisis two years ago have presented obstacles. “Sales have been pretty stagnant.” Surprise said he needs some sales to use for setting valuations, because he is seeking 5 “comps” (comparable sales) for each house, similar in cost and neighborhood, on which to base the new valuation.
Surprise said about 85% of the current valuations are “pretty good,” and probably won’t change much. He said about 15% of the properties have inaccurate values, mostly too low, and will see significant changes in valuation. But when one of the Board members expressed concern about seniors and veterans who may have hardships if their taxes went up from a revaluation, Surprise said seniors’ STAR exemptions and veterans exemptions will be bigger after the revaluation, because they are based on a percentage of assessed value. He said he expects the larger exemptions to more than compensate for any increase in tax in most cases. Surprise said, “I don’t expect anyone to get hurt from doing this. I don’t see a downside to it.”
Surprise said when assessed values are near 100%, the Town does better in relation to towns whose assessed values are a lower percentage of full value when it comes to school taxes and County taxes.
Surprise said the Town has been putting money for the revaluation in the budget in recent years, which has not been spent, so it does not need to increase the budget to get this revaluation done. The 2018 budget had $9,500 in the Assessor’s contractual line, very little of which was spent. In 2017 only $627 was spent on that budget line. The 2019 budget again has $9,500 in that line, which Surprise said would easily cover any revaluation expenses. He said no outside contractors will be needed – he and his clerk will do all the work. He said there has been some talk of having an outside contractor do the valuation for Taconic, but he plans to do that himself.
Surprise said the State used to provide $5 per parcel in state aid to towns doing revaluations, but not any more. New York has $750,000 annually for the whole State to help municipalities with revaluations, so the Town will get some aid, but we don’t know in advance exactly how much that will be. But to get this state aid, the revaluation has to be “done right,” according to state guidelines. He said the first step is to visit and inspect each property in the Town and gather data about the size of the building, the number of bathrooms and bedrooms, and so on, to assemble all the data about each property. He expects this work to be done by next summer, when he will send out a “data mailer” to property owners detailing the information he has about each property. The owner then has a chance to contact the Assessor’s office and correct any incorrect information shown on the data mailers. The next milestone would be March 1, 2020, when he will send out “impact notices” which show the tentative new valuation and its possible impact on taxes. Property owners can then have informal conferences with the Assessor about the new valuations, and if they are not satisfied, they can contest them at Grievance Day in May. If they are still not satisfied, they can pursue their grievance through the courts.
The Board agreed that it is time to do a revaluation, and approved going forward with the revaluation starting right away. Supervisor Alan Webster said he feels it is essential to provide clear communications at each step of the revaluation process through the newspaper and the Town web site.