GUILDERLAND — In the wake of last fall’s elections, property assessments have become a focal point of political debate on the split-party town board.
"This is the first year it’s been different," said Carol Wysomski, the town’s assessor, of the town board, which saw two incumbent Democrats lose their seats to Republican new-comers — one of whom ran a campaign centered on unfair assessments. Wysomski has been through six administrations, she said, and she’ll be retiring from her post in July.
"My old boss said, ‘When you start to take criticism personally, it’s time,’" Wysomski said earlier this week of a contributing factor to her decision to retire.
"I’ve been here 37 years — this is the first time they’re using assessments as a game plan," she said of last fall’s campaign.
Two of the clerks in her office are qualified to be the assessor, she said, but neither of them want the job. "You do take a beating," she added of the criticism aimed at the post. Neither Democratic Supervisor Kenneth Runion nor Republican councilmen Warren Redlich and Mark Grimm have anyone in mind for the position.

In January, Redlich proposed having the heads of town departments come before the board during public meetings to answer questions and offer an understanding of what each department does and what it hopes to accomplish over the course of the year, he said at the time. Wysomski was first on his list to appear.
"I got elected on fair tax assessment," Redlich said, and Grievance Day — when residents can ask for a reduction in their assessments — is in the spring, which is why she topped the list. His motion was defeated along party lines, 3 to 2.
"I just feel like it’s a loaded gun," Wysomski said this week of why she chose not to appear when Redlich asked. Wysomski has made presentations about the assessment process to the board in the past, she said, which she would do again.

Every four or five years, since 1980, the assessor’s office has conducted a revaluation of property in Guilderland, she said. Since she became assessor in 1992, she’s done the residential assessments herself and the town has hired a firm to handle the commercial revaluation. For the last revaluation, in 2005, Hafner Valuation Group assessed 486 commercial parcels at a cost of $68,341 to the town, Runion said.

Wysomski uses a New York State Real Property Services program for conducting her revaluations, a program that 90 percent of municipalities use and that costs about $9,000 a year, she said. The value assigned to a property comes from a comparison to five recently-sold properties that are similar, she said, like the system used by appraisers. Guilderland has roughly 1,000 sales a year, which provides a solid base to draw from for comparison.
After she gets the comparison sheets for each home, "We spend a good three to four months just going up and down streets," she said. Someone from her office goes to each parcel and looks at it to make sure the value is appropriate to the home; if something looks off, she adjusts the value.

The next step brings her back to the office, where she generates an impact letter for each resident, which shows the impact rates for school, town, and county taxes and calculates what the current year’s taxes would have been with the new value, Wysomski said.

By February, people have digested their new home values and can come to Town Hall for an informal hearing with Wysomski, where she goes over the comparison sheet that lists the five recently-sold properties that are comparable and people can plead their case for a lower value. She estimated that a quarter of the people she sees during the informal hearings get an adjustment. After the last revaluation, Wysomski saw about 1,600 people, she said — less than one percent of the 12,396 parcels in town.

Then, in the spring, during the statewide Grievance Day, residents can address the board of assessment review, which is made up of five residents appointed to five-year terms by the town board. In 2005, the year of the last revaluation, 495 people grieved their assessments.

Redlich and three of his Suzanne Lane neighbors were among those looking for a reduction in 2005 and he was critical of the way the town handled the crowded Grievance Day at the time. Wysomski attributed the long lines and hours-long waits for hundreds of residents to a crowd in the early morning, which the town hadn’t seen before. Yesterday, Runion said that the town would consider taking appointments for residents on Grievance Day and also might appoint more members to the board so that it could be split, thereby being able to hear twice as many cases in the same amount of time.
"The whole process to me is a hurdle to make people jump over," Redlich said in 2005, explaining that many residents get discouraged by the long wait and accept their assessments. It isn’t typical for the board to grant relief on Grievance Day, Wysomski said, largely because people don’t bring proof of their home’s value with them.
The average assessed value of a home in Guilderland is $212,000, Wysomski said, and the highest assessed value is Crossgates Mall, which is worth $247,302,800. Built in 1983, the mall expanded in 1993 and contested its assessment every year since its addition — except for when it missed a deadline in 2001 — until it reached a settlement with the town and the school district in 2005. Hafner assessed the mall, Wysomski said, "They had given me a low end and a high end. I went down the middle."
The settlement removed the possibility of litigation for five years, which is on the horizon, and, after that, Pyramid Cos., which owns the mall, may, again, challenge its assessment. Of the taxes that the mall pays, Wysomski said, "It really has been a savings to people in the town having Crossgates there."

Nearby Colonie Center, which dates from the 1960s and is undergoing renovations, is currently assessed at $73,250,000 — that figure doesn’t include Macy’s or Sears, which are owned separately, as is the Macy’s at Crossgates.
"It’s forecasted to go up next year as well," said Mark Swift, a senior appraiser in the town of Colonie, of that mall’s assessment.

Asked about Crossgates’ potential assessment, Wysomski said she couldn’t answer, and Hafner didn’t return a phone call. She said that commercial properties don’t increase as fast as residential properties do.
Right now, assessments in Guilderland are about 20 percent below current sale prices, Wysomski said. "That’s a pretty good indicator you need to do a reval," she said.
"I honestly don’t see it happening in ’09," she said, since there will be a new assessor coming in. "It’ll have to be 2010."