NEW SCOTLAND — In the wake of a town-wide reassessment that raised residential values 80 percent, a handful of residents appealed to the town board this month asking the elected officials to step in and do something about what they see as errors in the system.
"Property inventories are completely wrong," Sarah Kavanaugh of Wolf Hill said.

While the town board at first considered holding a public information meeting, the elected officials have decided to stay the course, Supervisor Ed Clark told The Enterprise this week.
"We do not believe that is appropriate to intervene at this point in the process," Clark said. "There would be little gain to open it up" to a large public session for everyone to voice their complaints. "It would only be disruptive to the process," he said. The informal hearings and the board of assessment review are the appropriate places to present errors and register objections, Clark said.

Informal hearings have been completed, and the assessor’s office is now busy reviewing all the information that residents brought forward, re-calculating and adjusting the new 2006 assessments accordingly.

Letters will be mailed to residents in April, before May 1, informing them of any value changes.

Kavanaugh says she understands, for her individual assessment, that she has to go through the process to request changes, but her concerns go beyond her own lot, and she wants to know what is going to be done about the inaccuracy across the board.
"It’s putting a burden and ill will on us to tattle-tale on our neighbors," Kavanaugh said.
"I know my house is not cheap," Melanie Ernst, who lives in the hamlet of Clarksville, said. But when she sees bigger and better houses at a lower value, it doesn’t seem fair, she said.

Reassessment is done to bring every parcel up to 100 percent; New Scotland last went through the process in 1997.
"No one with a low assessment will come forward and say it’s too low," Ernst said. She said a bunch of people in her neighborhood got together and hired an appraiser to give them a group rate, and the appraiser's value for her property is much lower than what she has been assessed at.
As for Ernst’s informal hearing, she said, "I can’t tell you how disappointed I was." She left the one-on-one session still feeling in the dark.

After hearing concerns from residents about a problem with New Scotland’s whole assessment system, Clark said he discussed it with assessment and appraisal specialists.

The two specialists who had been hired to field the informal hearings, Bob Post and Joanne Soules, told Clark that, in their opinion, there weren’t any concerns brought up in the hearings that were out of the ordinary; they said they had heard similar concerns when they worked for other towns doing reassessments.
"Our inventories are as good as most towns can get," Clark said.

Clark also spoke with Robert Kitchen, who the town has hired as a consultant to help with the management of the reassessment, making sure the assessing office stays on budget and within the timeline. Clark said he spoke to the state’s Office of Real Property Services as well.

Town Assessor Julie Nooney said that Robert Jacobs, with the state, has been monitoring and following New Scotland’s progress.
At this point "everything is as it should be," Clark said, even with some errors.

The inventory is changing practically daily as people do things to their houses, Clark said. At no one time can the town’s inventory actually be exactly accurate, Clark said.

Nooney told The Enterprise that she has made herself available to meet with people who felt unsatisfied and still uninformed after their informal hearings.

As residents come forward with new information, their claims are checked out, both Clark and Nooney said.
The process is to some degree judgmental, and the town relies on the trained assessor to make those judgements, Clark said. The best comparisons are recent sales that are adjusted, he said. "It’s not uncomplicated," Clark said, and there are adjustments still to be made.

Discrepancies

Kavanaugh sat in her dining room, with data sheets, comparable charts and a large pile of photographs of houses around town that appear to have third floors and additions that weren’t accounted for on the inventories. She also compared the inventories on the assessment website to the town’s list of building permits that have been issued.
"It’s just down right sloppy," Kavanaugh said. "Floors tend to go missing," she said as she went from one list to another. She pointed out one entry error, where someone’s property inventory listed a finished basement but then, on a comparables sheet, the same house was listed without a finished basement.

Kavanuagh also argues that coding is incorrect. For example, the code number for one type of garage over another, or the type of barn. One inventory listed a pole barn when it’s actually a horse barn, Kavanaugh said.
"Garbage in, garbage out," she said.

Looking at recent sales, she found a house on Beaver Dam Road that sold for $350,000 in June of 2004 and now is assessed for less, at $214,000, Kavanuagh said. If easements are supposed to be at market value, it’s hard to believe that a house has gone down in value in two years while everyone else’s is going up, Kavanaugh said.

Also, when a house sold at a certain price in recent years, but is then assessed for 2006 at less than that value, the assessor still used that old sale price as a comparison although the assessor herself has decided it is actually worth less, Kavanaugh said.

In her informal hearing, Kavanaugh said she received no explanation for why one number was used over another and how her assessed value was calculated. It appears that for some homes, cost estimates were used and, for others, time-adjusted price is divided by the square feet, Kavanaugh said; it wasn’t explained to her why one number is used over another.
"If they can’t tell you why, how can you fight that" You need information to know how to fight," Kavanaugh said.
"I’ve given them the data and the correct information and my inventory sheet is still wrong," said Gerald Lenseth, another resident. In past years, he had gone to the Assessment Board of Review and had his inventory corrected and, now, it’s wrong again, he said; the same problem as before as if he hadn't already fixed it.
"What am I supposed to do" Go before the board again"" Lenseth said.

Assessor’s view

Nooney told The Enterprise this week she believes the informal hearings and new assessments have gone "very smoothly and according to plan."

There are 3,047 residential parcels in town.

Altogether, 915 informal hearings were held, less than she had anticipated, and quite a few people walked away from the sessions actually agreeing with their assessment after gaining understanding of where their number had come from, Nooney said. Some people attended the informal hearing just to become more informed, not in protest, she said.

Problems arose in the informal hearings when residents wanted to know details about the computer program, computer calculations, and the software that was used. The staff isn’t able to answer these types of questions, Nooney said.

"We’re not computer programmers."

It was expected that a lot of people would be unhappy with their assessments, Nooney said, and it is expected that not every-one will be happy in the end, either. It’s particularly shocking to residents, she said, because it’s been a decade since many parcels were reassessed.

Her office is now researching the new information that has been brought to her attention, and making adjustment where an error might have been made, she said.

In April, some people who did not attend informal hearings may still receive a letter stating that an adjustment to their preliminary assessment has been made by the assessor based on new information.

Even though these people have missed the informal-hearing phase, if they disagree with their adjusted value, they will still have ample time to appeal to the Board of Assessment Review, Nooney said.
The first thing she had to do with information gathered from the informal hearings "is weed out people who think, if they just show up and fill out" paper work that their assessment will automatically be changed. This is not the case, she said.
There are some properties "we need to go out and look at again," Nooney said.

Nooney has from the beginning been quick to say that she is not perfect and that there will be errors.

However, she said this week sometimes where people think there are errors there actually haven’t been.

There has been a misinterpretation of the standards, Nooney said.

For example, a house may look like it has two stories, but, based on assessment standards in the state, even a raised ranch is registered as a one story building with a finished basement, not as a two-story building, Nooney said; she has received a lot of calls on that one.

Also, there is a misinterpretation of code numbers for the computer, on what is classified as a one-story or one-car garage and what the differences are, she said.

Every year, the building permits are compared to the assessment inventory, Nooney said. There has been some catch-up with this reassessment for some items that were built 10 year ago though, she said, when the code enforcement officer or residents bring them to her attention.
"It was not our intention to bring neighbors against neighbors," Nooney said.
To the citizens who feel it’s unfair to place the responsibility on them, Supervisor Clark said, "I’m sorry"but that’s the way things are"If you don’t show them to us, we won't know about it, at least not for this year."
"We can’t look at every property," Clark said. When a reassessment was done in the 1990’s the town contracted with a firm for the updates and the firm sent workers to go inside homes to take measurements and make observations. This year, the assessor did not personally inventory the inside of homes.
"It is very, very, very expensive and burdensome," Clark said, to do an internal look at homes. It would require a huge staff and, in the end, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee more equity, Clark said.

The town does not have the right to enter people’s homes, and even the 1990’s internal review was dependent upon the homeowners’ permission, so the town ended up getting numbers from inside of some houses and others only from the outside.
"We pursue accuracy to the best of our ability," Clark said. If a homeowner doesn’t want the assessor to come inside to confirm there is an unfinished basement, there’s nothing that can be done, Clark said.
"It’s not a perfect process, but we’ve given everybody reasonable opportunity to confront the process," Clark said.

In the end everyone isn’t going to be happy, he said. People don’t regularly think about selling their houses, Clark said adding, people haven’t come to grips with the reality of real estate.