- By Dan Veaner
- News
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"The purpose is to help folks understand the assessment process," says Valuation Specialist Irene Kehoe. Kehoe was in Lansing last week with information about exemptions, and was prepared to help people fill out applications there. She also had disclosure hearing applications, and general information about the department and the assessment process.
Irene Kehoe at Lansing Town Hall
Figuring out property taxes can be confusing to say the least. In a nutshell, municipalities decide how much money they need for the coming year. Some of that budget may be paid for with fees, grants or other forms of income. The rest, called the 'tax levy,' is the taxpayers' responsibility. Each taxpayer is responsible for a percentage of the levy. How responsible you are depends on the value of your real property which could be your home, land, or a business building.
The 'tax rate' is calculated on the total dollar value of all the properties in Tompkins County. For every $1,000 of the assessed value of your property you pay a certain amount in taxes, which varies from the town to the county to the fire district to the school district. With all of our properties being valued at 100% instead of 85% this year, that is going to make our governments look good on the face of it. "The rates should go down because the taxable values of the properties increased," Kehoe explains. "We're seeing it go down in Lansing. That's what should happen."
But will that lower tax rate mean lower taxes? While Assessment Department officials are quick to say that your taxes could be lower, they make sure to add that it depends on the local governments and other taxing authorities, not on the department. All the Assessment Department does is determine how large or small your percentage of the tax will be.
To help people make sense of this mish-mash, Director Valeria Coggin reached out to municipalities earlier this year. She explained the outreach program and how her department hoped to clear up property tax confusion in the face of the changes. A brochure was placed at town halls and other public places that attempts to explains the ins and outs of valuation and property taxes. Specific detailed information on each property was placed on the department's Web site and on six public computers in the Assessment office.
Next assessment disclosure notices went out that show your new assessment based on 100% of the fair market value of your property. Lansing residents received these notices last week. In that mailing was a condensed version of the brochure with a 'disclosure hearing' application on the back.
New this year are informal disclosure hearings. These meetings are five minute sessions face to face with a county assessor in which you may correct the information they have on file for your property. Because your assessment is based on your 'inventory' -- how many bedrooms you have, how many bathrooms, total living space, and so on -- your assessment could go down (or up) if you correct faulty information in the county data base.
Around May the tentative assessment notices will go to those whose assessments have been adjusted, and at that point there is a brief period when residents can appeal their assessment. Shortly thereafter school tax bills will be in our mailboxes.
The problem the department faces is that it is the public face of a confusing process that affects peoples' wallets. "We're the only ones you can come in and sit down face to face with," Kehoe laments. "You can't go to the school board and do that, you can't go to the town board and do that, you can't go to the county board... You can't go to the IRS and say, 'I don't want to play this game this year. Don't send me that form.' Even though we are not responsible for the taxes we are the only public office where you can come and sit down face to face with a representative to talk to."
Officials are hoping the outreach program will help deflect some of that, and help people really understand how their tax bill and property value is determined. "We've been told that we didn't explain the process well enough in the last three years," Kehoe says. "But ignorance is not a good excuse anymore. There's been a ton of stuff in the paper in the last three years regarding the assessment cycle. When we started doing annual reassessments in 1999 the market took off. So we were accused of jumping on the bandwagon. But who would know that?
"Then it continued to go up and up and up for those five years. Then when the legislators changed us to a three year cycle, people thought that if the market goes down then you're not going to lower our values. However the real property tax law says that we have to look at every property every year and value every one at a uniform level of assessment. So whether it's 50% or 85% or 100% we look at every property every year. If the market goes down we'll bring it down."
Both Kehoe and Coggin have expressed opposition to the three year cycle, saying that an annual cycle is more understandable to the public. They have characterized it as a way the county legislature makes rising taxes look more palatable. And indeed when the tax rate goes down it certainly appears as if the municipalities have lowered taxes. But that first impression is deceiving, because whatever the tax rate is, the total of the budgets of all the taxing authorities boundaries you live within and the percentage you are responsible for is what will affect the bottom line when your tax bill comes.
"Most of the public that I have met with in disclosure hearings the last three weeks think that the three year cycle looked like we were trying to hide something," Kehoe says. "We were on annual reassessment from 1999 to 2005. We tried our best to educate people that the market value of your property is equal to the assessment. When you change it we had a lot of folks telling us last year, 'I don't understand 85%. Where did you get that number? I understand 100%.' So people understand 100%. It doesn't seem like you're hiding anything."
Kehoe says that while some people come up with wild excuses that they hope will lower their valuation, most just want to understand that their properties have been fairly evaluated. She says that taxpayers should look at their inventory on-line or in the office and make sure it is accurate, even if they don't want to challenge the valuation.
"If you look at your value and you say, 'My value seems in line with what's selling in my neighborhood, however there are a few things in my inventory that I would like to have corrected,' what I would suggest is that you either print out that inventory sheet on-line or from our office and just make those corrections on the sheet," she advises. "If it's something on the heat source or the style of the house, or the size of the garage or something like that. We would just correct that in the office. They don't even have to meet with someone if it's just minor corrections. But if it's something they want to talk about -- conditions or issues that they are having with the house that you may not be able to see from a drive-by from the road -- then they can make a list of those things and meet with the appraiser and at that time determine whether an inspection is warranted or not."
Not many residents took advantage of the informational session in Lansing or other communities. Kehoe said the low attendance was probably due to the fact that most people want to talk about their individual properties, and that was not the purpose of the workshop. Scheduling them during work days also didn't help. "If it's something that's important to someone they'll make arrangements to come," she said. "But they'd be more apt to make an appointment with someone in the office for a preliminary hearing than to come to something like this."
She also surmises that with on-line and other resources residents are more educated than they would have been years ago, and that she has noticed that fewer individual meetings are being scheduled now than at the beginning of the decade, despite the three year cycle. According to Assistant Director Jay Franklin, public logins on the Web site have soared from 1,804 between November 25 and December 22 of last year to 6,978 between January 25 and February 22 of this year.
The informal disclosure hearings are designed to act as a buffer for the 34,500 tax parcel owners in the county. "This year people have an opportunity," she says. "If they want to have a disclosure hearing they can call and make an appointment and meet with someone in the office. They can also submit information in the mail, and submit information on-line. It all gets looked at the same way."
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