Insane.
That”™s how County Legislator Bill Burton summed up Westchester”™s property assessment system and its impact on the taxpayer.
At a recent news conference in White Plains, members of the Westchester County Municipal Officials Association, tax commission and state assessors association reviewed a final draft proposal of revised valuation practices to forge a more standardized, or equitable, assessment.
“Westchester County in its budget has approximately $12.5 million to pay back people who were overtaxed one, two or three years ago,” Burton said. “In other words, you and I are being taxed in order to pay back money that we overtaxed somebody else. This is the definition of insanity, is it not?”
He said somewhere in the vicinity of $48 million to $50 million is taken in by the county in this manner.
“Westchester County is forced by the system to overtax every property owner in the county two-and-one-half percent for the payback of over-taxation in the first place,” he said. “This is just simply not reasonable and every municipality here has a similar situation.”
Reassessment practices need consistency ”“ and they need to be conducted at the state level, municipal officials say.
“It doesn”™t make sense for Rockland to do it every four years and then Bronxville to do it when it does it and then every 150 years or so to do it in Mount Vernon,” Town Supervisor Valerie Moore O”™Keeffe of Mamaroneck said. “None of this makes sense and most states in the U.S. have a law that mandates that every so many number of years that towns and villages and counties have to reassess.”
Yonkers City Council President Chuck Lesnick said Yonkers saw its last revaluation in 1954; Harrison, 1938 and circa Civil War times in Mount Vernon.
He said it is not only a municipally driven problem, but one that directly impacts the county budget, business community and taxpayer.
“And in the end, it will help save on the litigation expense that is just killing the taxpayer every year with tax certioraris and appeals to various boards of assessment of reviews.”
Village Manager Al Gatta of Scarsdale, chairman of the Westchester Collaborative Assessment Commission, outlined several proposals included in the draft report.
To keep property inventory up to date, 14 characteristics were identified for property cards along with 20 characteristics to be drawn from field inspections.
A recommendation was made to move toward a four-year reassessment cycle with a base-year concept.
The commission called for a collaboration between the county and municipalities, as well as reform of the appeals process.
According to the Westchester County Clerk”™s Office, 9,714 appeals were received in 2010, about 4,000 more than the year before.
Town of Ossining Assessor Josette Polzella said, “What we”™re seeing is not only refunds as a result of the grievance activity, but we”™re also seeing losses in our overall assessment roll.
“We want to not only collect data, but to build in a mechanism where this wouldn”™t be shifting from year to year or community to community.”
The draft report cited the aggregate of taxes collected on the assessed value of properties was more than $4 billion.
Refund amounts total about $55 million in addition to losses on assessed value.
The cost is roughly equivalent to a year”™s worth of countywide refunds.
“We want to work together, we have provided some of the tools and now it”™s a matter of taking it to your board members, to your public, to the business community and saying, ”˜Here”™s an opportunity to get it right,”™” Burton said.
The county in March 2008 applied for and obtained a $50,000 grant from the state Department of Taxation and Finance to enable 45 municipalities to form the collaborative assessment commission, which drafted the proposal.
It would be fair to mention that Burton, while he was Ossining town supervisor, was hired by Polzella to do revaluation work. In other words, both of these two “sources” have made money in the private business of reval – and together!