The town of New Castle is considering joining a Westchester consortium to have properties revaluated.
New Castle would be joining in a group led by Greenburgh and Yonkers. New Castle has not had a townwide reassessment since 1978. Many municipalities have not had a revaluation done since the 1950s. The town board discussed the issue at a recent work session.
A revaluation involves collecting all of the current inventory information of a property including dimensions, type of property and the style. Once that information is collected and reviewed it is converted to the current market value of the property, which determines how much a property owner pays in property taxes.
Town of Ossining, Pleasantville, Briarcliff, North Castle, Bedford, North Salem, Mount Vernon, Peekskill and Mount Kisco have also expressed interest in revaluation.
The consortium would pick one contractor for the revaluation, with the process starting in early 2014. Philip Platz, New Castle Town assessor, said that the per-parcel cost of revaluation would range from $100 to $150, with a monitor costing $11 to $15 per parcel.
Revaluation would cost New Castle between $700,000 and $1.1 million.
Municipalities across the county have been hemorrhaging money in recent years, as property owners have filed successful tax certioraris to lower their property tax burden. Certioraris have increased in Westchester from 894 in 2006 to 9,068 in 2012.
No idea why it would cost so much in New Castle, In CT, where revals are performed by statute every 5 years, it costs, on average, $35 per parcel.