NEW SCOTLAND — Residents across town opened up their mail on Monday to discover their property is worth substantially more. Town-wide the residential parcels, 3,047 of them, had an assessed value increase of 80 percent over last year.

Half of the residential parcels in New Scotland are projected to have a tax increase of more than 10 percent.
"Everybody up here is protesting. It’s outrageous," Sarah Kavanaugh from Wolf Hill told The Enterprise on Monday. "Everyone is hysterical....Where on earth are they coming up with these values"" she asked. The assessment staff must be "out of their minds...I can’t even comprehend," Kavanaugh said.

Her assessment went from $151,000 to $448,000, she said, a change of 196 percent.

Town-wide for all parcels including utility, farm, residential and commercial the assessed value change was 71 percent.

Reassessment is done to bring every parcel up to 100 percent of marketvalue.

The highest values for residential parcels in New Scotland are about $2 million, Nooney said, and the lowest assessed residential parcels with a livable house is $56,700.

Bob Kitchen, a consultant hired by the town to oversee the revaluations told The Enterprise that, after hearings, he believes the final change in assessed values between 2005 and 2006 will be around 68 percent.

Utility parcels had the smallest change in value, 17 percent, farmland changed by 74 percent, vacant land by 100 percent, commercial parcels by 63 percent, and residential parcels by 80 percent.

A contributing factor into why vacant-land assessed value had increased at a greater rate then residential could be because of an increased demand in the rural market for vacant land between now and 1997, when the last reassessment was completed, more so than the residential demand, said the town’s assessor, Julie Nooney.
For assessment purposes, Wolf Hill, where Kavanaugh lives is located in the neighborhood code labeled "Central Rural." This area of town has an assessed value change of 70 percent. The average assessed value in this neighborhood in 2005 was $220,120 and is now $373,400.

The thing that Kavanaugh is most shocked about is that the public has been told that reassessment is done to bring properties up to the 100-percent of real market value. If she could sell her home for almost half-a-million dollars as the new assessment suggests than she would sell it in a heartbeat, she said, but she knows that’s not true.
She and her husband built their house together, Kavanaugh said, "It’s nothing fancy." There’s no public water or sewer service, she said. While her home is in the Voorheesville School District her road washed away three times last year, she said. People don’t want to drive way out here to live, she said.
She understands that, in order to protest her new value, she has to compare her house to others around her. "But they’re all wrong," she said of the new assessments. How is she supposed to find a comparison when the whole baseline is off, Kavanaugh asked.

The assessing process

Nooney, the town assessor, late Tuesday evening in her office, slowly went through the numbers to explain the whole process. In a mock informal hearing, she used Supervisor Ed Clark and Councilman Richard Reilly’s properties as examples.

Reassessments are only based on actual sales of comparable houses — comparable in size, style, and neighborhood, she said. In every neighborhood in town, Nooney was able to find actual sales to compare to, no less than three years old, she said.

It’s not comparing assessed value with assessed value, but coming up with an assessment value through sales, Nooney said.

She uses computer programs to help her calculate but a lot of the assessment depends on her knowledge of the market, Nooney said.

For example, in the computer, Nooney will for a particular house give so much weight to neighborhood and so much weight to building style through allotting points.

She hopes to do reassessments at least every three years to preserve equity.
"I can’t predict what somebody is going to sell a house for," Nooney said, but she can "anticipate what a property can bring in an open market."

She’s aware that some people are seeing on their disclosure notices that their houses are worth twice as much as they thought.

People don’t understand the real-estate market right now, Nooney said.

For Clark and Reilly’s property Nooney printed out their disclosure notices and also the four comparables, listed in columns on one sheet. The houses looked similar in their photographs, were from the same neighborhood, and they were similar in design and size.

Reilly’s home on Tervino Lane in the village had been assessed last year at $67,000 and now has an assessed value of $200,000. Three of Reilly’s comparables were residences on Pleasant Street. His home was built in 1880 and those he was compared to were built the same year or in 1900. Two of the comparable houses sold in 2003 — one for $110,000 and the other for $175,000.

Then, Nooney explained, she calculates a time-adjusted sale price, which brought these sale prices up to $134,800 and $212,000. Also, value is adjusted if one of the houses that it is being compared to has an extra bathroom or one less bedroom, she said; these types of additions and subtractions are made.

Informal hearings

The assessing department is now scheduling appointments to review one-on-one with individuals their assessments, Nooney said. These informal hearings will be held from Feb. 21. through March 10.

The new assessments are based on only actual sales, not what people think their property will sell for, Nooney said. She really wants to encourage people to schedule an appointment so the assessment staff can show landowners where their numbers came from. There is no easy formula or one calculation, she said.

Kavanaugh said that she has two separate parcels, one with her house and another with acreage. In total she has 24.79 acres, but there is a gorge on 15 acres of it, she said, which is not developable.

Nooney said topographic issues with a property would be a factor in assessment, and that people should bring these kinds of concerns to the assessing department’s attention during the informal hearings.

An informal hearing is not only for residents to learn where their numbers came from, but also is an opportunity for them to learn how to challenge their assessment, Nooney said. Each resident will be allotted at least 15 minutes of one-on-one time to look over the comparables used, review the property inventory data, and submit supporting evidence of an error or need for assessment adjustment.
"I’m not perfect by any means," Nooney said. A landowner most certainly can bring to her attention something she doesn’t know, especially since she was not able to walk the grounds of every property, she said.

Apples and oranges

Kavanaugh said that she called the Weathersfield development and inquired how much a house would cost and was told $449,000, she said. She knows her panel house with formica countertops, no deck, built by themselves from a kit, is not worth the same as the nice, upscale, newer homes in Weathersfield, she said.

People have to be careful not to compare apples with oranges, Nooney said.

The town has posted property assessments with pictures and inventory list on its website so people can look up what their neighbor’s assessments are and find similar comparable houses.

Also on-line, Nooney has posted the list of sales she used from 2002 through 2006, sorted by date and neighborhood.

Reports are also available at the public libraries and Town Hall.

All in the neighborhood

The assessment value change within the village of Voorheesville was 73 percent. The assessment value of parcels in the town outside of the village changed by 83 percent.

The Feura Bush area saw one of the greatest changes, of 91 percent. In 2005, the average assessed value of Feura Bush property had been $89,370 and it is now $170,390.

The Central Rural neighborhood saw a 91-percent change as well. The Central Rural neighborhood includes Game Farm Road, Stove Pipe Road, and Upper Flat Rock Road.

The neighborhoods that saw a smaller change in value included village side streets, at 71 percent, and the neighborhood coded as Upper Development, at 68 percent. Some streets in Upper Development are Claremont, Crescent, and Forest, moving from an assessed value of $292,670 to $490,520.

The average parcel in Salem Hills was assessed at $120,990 in 2005 and now is assessed at $214,860, a change of 78 percent.

Residents ideas of moderate-income housing, middle-class housing, and high-end housing in New Scotland, will have to be adjusted if the assessments are accurate. It now looks like the developers that have come before the town with proposals over the last year were more on the mark when they asserted that moderate priced housing is $200,000.

Nooney went through the new numbers for neighborhoods in a PowerPoint presentation before the town board last week.

Councilman Reilly asked why homes in the Voorheesville School District had increased by 77 percent in value while houses in the Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk District had increased 85 percent. Nooney said one of the reasons could be because there had been more new construction in Voorheesville so some properties were assessed more recently and, as a result, were closer to the 100 percent market value. There could have been less activity in Ravena - Coeymans - Selkirk School District in southern New Scotland, so property there had to make a larger jump from 1997 numbers to today’s, she said, in order to be brought up to their full market value.

Taxes

After a reassessment tax rates change. A tax rate is calculated by dividing the money to be raised for a budget by the total taxable assessment base. The total taxable assessment base for New Scotland increased from $557.5 million to $953.3 million.

So, while budgets from the town, schools, and county tend to go up a little each year, the number the levy is going to be divided by has increased by 71 percent, which means overall the tax rate will actually go down per 1,000 of assessed value. Based on current budget numbers, the town’s assessing department has calculated what the new tax rates would be. For the town outside of the village, the latest tax rate is $1.61, and, if the budget stays the same, the new rate to be applied per every 1,000 of assessed value will be .96 cents.

The reassessment ensures that the distribution of property taxes is fair, Nooney has said. The property owners who have been paying more than their fair share will see a reduction, while those who have been paying only a part of their share, although they may not have known it, will now be paying more in taxes.

For the Voorheesville School District, based on this year’s budget, the tax rate in New Scotland has been $26.18 per 1,000 of assessed value, Nooney said, and would now become $15.68 assuming the budget stays the same.

In computing the tax rates for the comparisons on the disclosure notices, the new tax base was lowered about 2 percent to reflect a more accurate assessed value change, anticipating reductions after hearings, Kitchen said.

Since the residential class of parcels increased by 80 percent, which is larger than the town average, some of the town’s taxes will be shifting from classes like utilities with an average change less than 71 percent to the residential class, Kitchen said.

When looking at 2,893 residential parcels, Kitchen wrote in an e-mail, 35.6 percent (1,062) have had a tax change of between plus- or minus-10 percent; 14.4 percent (429) have a tax decrease greater than minus-10 percent, and 50 percent (1,492) parcels show an increase in taxes of more than plus-10 percent.