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Although Rotterdam’s property tax roll may not be perfect, it was accurate enough for the state to validate it following the 2007 revaluation, an official from GAR Associates said.

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County  Schenectady   74.89  Final  09/12/07 N          
421500 City  Schenectady   68.00  Final  08/03/07 N   68.00      
422000 Town  Duanesburg   28.25  Final  07/27/07 N   30.00      
422001 Village  Delanson   28.25  Final  07/27/07 N        422000
422200 Town  Glenville   90.00  Final  08/01/07 N   90.00      
422201 Village  Scotia   90.00  Final  08/01/07 N        422200
422400 Town  Niskayuna   55.00  Final  08/01/07 N   55.00      
422600 Town  Princetown   30.96  Final  08/01/07 N   33.00      
422800 Town  Rotterdam   100.00  Final  07/27/07 N   100.00      
430000 County  Schoharie  

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2007 100.00  final 07/27/2007 100.00                        
2006 2.95  final 07/17/2006 2.95                        
2005 3.39  final 08/01/2005 3.82                        
2004 3.82  final 08/06/2004 4.24                        
2003 4.24  final 08/18/2003 4.51                        
2002 4.51  final 08/21/2002 4.75                        
2001 4.75  final 08/02/2001 4.75                        
2000 4.75  final 10/17/2000 4.79                        
1999 4.79  final 03/24/2000 4.88                        
1998 4.88  final 01/29/1999

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In New York State, the property tax is a local tax, raised and spent locally to finance local governments and public schools. While the State does not collect or receive any direct benefit from the property tax, this tax is still of major importance as the largest single revenue source for the support of municipal and school district services. More than $26 billion is raised in local property taxes across the state annually. (Also see, The Real Property Tax Primer and the 2001 Annual Report)

The New York State Office of Real Property Services (ORPS) is statutorily obligated to administer an equalization program in order to assure equitable property tax allocation among nearly 4,000 taxing jurisdictions in New York State, and to insure the proper allocation of State Aid to Education funds, among other purposes. Equalization seeks to measure the relationship of locally assessed values to an ever-changing real estate market. Each year, ORPS calculates equalization rates for each of the state’s more than 1,200 assessing units.

Why is equalization necessary?
Equalization is necessary in New York State because: (1) there is no fixed percentage at which property must be assessed; (2) not all municipalities assess property at the same percentage of market value; and (3) taxing jurisdictions, such as most school districts, do not share the same taxing boundaries as the cities and towns that are responsible for assessing properties. Most of the state’s more than 700 school districts distribute their taxes among segments of several municipalities, many of which have different levels of assessment. The number of municipal segments in a school district can range from one to fifteen or more.

What is an equalization rate?
At its simplest, an equalization rate is the state’s measure of a municipality’s level of assessment (LOA). This is the ratio of total assessed value (AV) to the municipality’s total market value (MV). The municipality determines the AV; the MV is estimated by the state. The equalization rate formula is:

Total Assessed Value (AV)  

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  =  Equalization Rate
Total Market Value (MV)  

Equalization rates do not indicate the degree of uniformity among assessments within a municipality. (More information regarding uniformity is available from Fair Assessments - A Guide for Property Owners.)

What does your equalization rate mean?
An equalization rate of 100 means that the municipality is assessing property at 100 percent of market value.
An equalization rate of less than 100 means that the municipality’s total market value is greater than its assessed value.
An equalization rate of greater than 100 means that the total assessed value for the municipality is greater than its total market value.
There would be no need for equalization if all municipalities assessed all property at 100 percent of market value every year.

Find the equalization rate for your municipality or school district.

What is the relationship between the State’s equalization rate and the municipality’s level of assessment?
In New York State each municipality is authorized to assess at market value or some fraction of market value. A level of assessment (LOA) of 50 percent means that assessments are at half of market value; an LOA of 100 percent means a community is assessing at 100 percent of market value. Regardless of the LOA chosen by a municipality, all of the assessments in the municipality are required by law to be at a uniform percentage of market value.

Equalization rates are the state’s measure of each municipality’s LOA. Each local assessor is required by law to state the municipal LOA on each year’s assessment roll. The state determines the equalization rate by analyzing the locally stated LOA. In accordance with national standards, ORPS reviews the work of the assessor and determines whether the stated LOA is within adequate tolerances to be used as the equalization rate. If certain criteria are met, the LOA becomes the rate. In municipalities where ORPS cannot accept or confirm the LOA, ORPS uses its own independent estimate of total market value to compare to the total assessed value.

What is the benefit of having the locally determined LOA accepted as the equalization rate?
Where assessors are accurately stating the LOA on the tentative assessment roll, they will be indicating the equalization rate upon which school taxes are distributed. When municipalities keep assessments up-to-date each year, they will be adjusting assessed values to reflect market changes, resulting in a consistent LOA and equalization rate from year to year.

What does it mean when your municipality’s equalization rate decreases?
A falling equalization rate means that market values are rising faster than assessed values. Keeping assessments up-to-date annually can result in consistent equalization rates each year.

Why do equalization rates need to be established each year?
The Real Property Tax Law requires that annual State equalization rates be established for each county, city, town and village. Equalization rates are calculated each year to reflect that year’s assessment roll and current market values for each assessing unit.

What are equalization rates used for?
Aside from apportionment of taxes among municipal segments of school districts and counties, and distribution of State Aid for Education, some of the less recognized uses of equalization rates include:

ü establishment of tax and debt limits;
ü allocation of costs, such as for jointly operated hospitals among participating localities or an injury to a volunteer firefighter, among others;
ü determination of state assessments (special franchise) or approval of local assessments (state-owned land);
ü determination of ceilings (railroad and agricultural values) and exemptions;
ü determination of level of STAR exemptions;
ü apportionment of sales tax revenues and joint indebtedness; and
ü as evidence in court proceedings on the issue of assessment inequity and small claims assessment review hearings.

May the equalization rate be used in an assessment appeal?
Yes. Property owners in New York State (except in Nassau County and New York City) may use the equalization rate as one piece of evidence in assessment grievance cases before the Board of Assessment Review and in State Supreme Court. Residential property owners also may use the State equalization rate in assessment cases brought under the provisions of Small Claims Assessment Review. More information on assessment challenges is available in ORPS’s publication entitled “What To Do If You Disagree With Your Assessment.”

How do equalization rates relate to school property taxes?
The equalization rate is used to estimate the total market value of an entire taxing jurisdiction and/or segments of jurisdictions. The following formula is used to estimate a municipality’s total market value:

Current Total Assessed Value  

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  =    Total Market Value Estimate (also known as Equalized Full Value)
Current Equalization Rate  

In order for a school district to fairly distribute its property tax levy (the total amount of school taxes to be collected), the levy needs to be divided in proportion to the total market value of each municipal segment. This allows for an equitable distribution of taxes based upon the market value of each municipality or segment.

For example School District AB needs to raise $1 million through property taxes (thus, a levy of $1 million). The district contains all of Town A and all of Town B. Each town has a total assessed value of $10 million. If the $1 million tax levy simply were allocated on the basis of the assessed values, the taxpayers in both towns would evenly split the levy, with each town paying $500,000.

However, through the equalization process, the state determines that that the two towns have different levels of assessment.  Town A has an equalization rate of 33.33 and Town B has an equalization rate of 50.00.



Towns A and B can be compared for the purpose of dividing the $1 million school district tax levy between them:

   Town A
Town B

Assessed Value (AV) of each Town  $10 million $10 million
Equalization Rate of each Town  33.33 50.00
Market Value of each Town  $30 million $20 million
Market Value of School District AB = $50 million  
Percent of Market Value (and, therefore, percent of levy) for each Town  60% 40%
Tax Levy to be raised from each Town  $600,000 $400,000
Tax Rate for each Town (Tax Levy ÷ Assessed Value) x 1000  $60 per $1000 AV $40 per $1000 AV

You can see that Town A is responsible for 60 percent ($30 million ÷ $50 million) of the full value in School District AB, and Town B is responsible for 40 percent ($20 million ÷ $50 million) of the full value. This means that the taxpayers in Town A will have to pay a total of $600,000 (60% of the $1 million tax levy) and those in Town B will have to pay $400,000 (40% of the $1 million tax levy).

It is the change in a town's total market value, as reflected in the equalization rate, relative to the change in the market value of other municipalities in a taxing jurisdiction, such as a school district, that may cause a particular town's share of the tax levy to increase or decrease. If one municipality's market value increases, but all the other municipalities in the taxing jurisdiction increase to a larger degree, then the first municipality's share of the tax levy will decline.

For more information
To learn more about equalization, assessments and other aspects of property tax adminstration, you may wish to talk with your assessor or county director of real property tax services.  More detailed information also is available online.


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NYS Office of Real Property Services
16 Sheridan Avenue
Albany, NY 12210-2714
(51 474-2982

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In New York State, the property tax is a local tax, raised and spent locally to finance local governments and public schools. While the State does not collect or receive any direct benefit from the property tax, this tax is still of major importance as the largest single revenue source for the support of municipal and school district services. More than $26 billion is raised in local property taxes across the state annually. (Also see, The Real Property Tax Primer and the 2001 Annual Report)

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Engrish?

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It is in English according to the leaders of our State.......

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CONSULTANT TO REVIEW ‘ASSESSMENT ERRORS’

Posted on: 04/22/08
Spotlight Newspapers
email: news@spotlightnews.com

Rotterdam Assessor Craig Surprise said he’s found a number of errors in the town’s property tax roll since taking office at the beginning of the year.

He said the Roman Villa restaurant off Duanesburg Road is only one of several businesses or buildings that are improperly inventoried.

The building that houses the Italian restaurant belongs to the Galesi Group and is leased to restaurant-owner Peter Guiderelli. Guiderelli said he pays rent and taxes to Galesi, but the restaurant does not appear on the town tax card for the Rotterdam Corporate Park where the business is located.

Surprise said the relatively new lodge and ski lift at Maple Ski Ridge are also missing from the tax rolls.

And that’s not all.

According to Surprise, National Grid pays taxes on all of its improvements on its nearly 700 acres in Rotterdam, but has never been assessed for the actual value of the land.

Rail company CSX Corp. has never been assessed either.

“We have inventory problems and I haven’t even cut the tip of the iceberg,” said Surprise.

Seeking answers, the town board unanimously passed a resolution on Wednesday, April 9, authorizing Supervisor Steven Tommasone to hire the Buffalo-based firm of Emminger, Hyatt, Newton & Pigeon Inc., Real Estate Appraisers and Consultants. The firm will be paid up to $30,000 to obtain a statistical analysis and to determine the accuracy of work completed by Amherst-based GAR Associates in last year’s town revaluation.

Tommasone said the town desires to ensure the accuracy of GAR’s work in the revaluation. The town paid GAR $752,000 to complete the revaluation, which was launched in 2005 after Rotterdam’s equalization rate dropped to 2.95 percent.
Tommasone said that if consultants determine GAR’s services were unsatisfactory, the town would attempt to recoup some of the money they used to hire the firm.

“We paid for a service and it’s necessary for us to be doing what we’re doing,” said Tommasone, referring to the town’s action to utilize a private consultant. “It’s very difficult to miss an entire building when you’re doing a data collection.”

Town officials chose their words carefully when they discussed the situation.

Town Attorney Gerard Parisi said that correspondence with GAR led the town to believe that any statement’s made against the company’s services could lead to legal action.

“They advised us that any negative or derogatory comments about their services could result in litigation against the parties making these statements,” said Parisi.

Parisi said that GAR had been made aware of the errors discovered by Surprise.

“By hiring a consultant we can ensure the accuracy of their work and ensure that they met their contractual obligation,” said Parisi.

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Continued uproar over Rotterdam revaluation unfair to assessors

    I read with interest the articles published in the Gazette on April 10 [“Assessor says he’s found errors — Consultant will review firm’s work during revaluation”] and April 16 [“GAR official defends reval work”] regarding the 2007 reassessment by the Rotterdam assessor.
    I’m writing as a former executive director of the state Office of Real Property Services (ORPS) and a real property taxpayer. I see an all-too-familiar but discouraging pattern to the events in Rotterdam described in the article.
    The town board’s support of last year’s reassessment at full-market value, and efforts to make information about assessments of comparable properties readily available to taxpayers, is commendable. The company hired to support the former assessor’s efforts in 2007 has a fine reputation and was a good choice. ORPS validated the level of the reassessment at 100 percent of full-market value. There’s nothing wrong, per se, with paying now to have a review conducted to help the new assessor fine-tune and update the assessment rolls (this should be done frequently), even evaluate performance. Reassessing 13,000 parcels, especially after 50 years without updates, can never be perfect.
    But there do appear to be hints of a pattern of unfair assessor bashing. This can typically occur during and after a full-value revaluation because often inequities that had been disguised within the fractional value system are now revealed. When properties are assessed at full-market value, it’s easy to see that a house might be overassessed when it’s assessed at $175,000 and a similar house in the neighborhood is assessed at $125,000. Its extent isn’t so easy to see when you’re comparing assessments of $5,162.50 vs. $3,687.50 (which in Rotterdam, prior to the revaluation, would have been the case, based on a 2.95 percent equalization rate established by ORPS in 2006).
    There is a saying that “no good deed goes unpunished.” Bashing a reassessment is an all-too-familiar practice in New York. As gratifying as this may seem (after all, there’s virtually no legal recourse available that would affect the 2007 assessment roll as a whole), this phenomenon has the effect of discouraging assessors from doing their jobs. The fact is that assessors aren’t required to conduct full-value reassessments every year. If they knew that their reassessments were going to cause such a backlash, they might easily decide against such reassessments. That would be unfortunate, since, by and large, these reassessments at full value lead to greater equity among taxpayers.
    All would be well advised to let the system work. And that includes refraining from doing anything to discourage the assessor from doing his or her job.
    THOMAS G. GRIFFEN
    Loudonville