In yesterday's or Monday's gazette there is an article that the mayor MIGHT include a citywide reassessment in the 2015 budget.

Dem council people were totally silent on the topic during the discussion at the committee meeting a week ago.   Why didn't the dem council people engage in discussion?

Face the FACTS:

In many cases, assessments have been reduced because of the certiorari cases, that is mostly commercial properties though some one and two family owners choose this appeal route.  

In the cases of residential homeowners, many don't have money to pay an attorney, is it moral, just, ethical, and proper that the city refuse to initiate a reduction thus making these homeowners pay more than their share of taxes?  John and Bob have identical houses with identical assessments.  But a few years later, both are assessed too high.   Bob hires an attorney to grieve his assessment and gets a reduction.   John cannot afford an attorney.  So now John is paying more taxes than Bob despite having identical houses with the same identical market value.  The city has an assessor's office whose job it is to adjust assessments in line with market values.  As John paid taxes for that service, but was not provided that service, and could not afford to pay an attorney to perform the service (of adjusting the assessment), is it proper that McCarthy makes John pay more taxes than Bob simply because John can't afford an attorney to render a service that he (John) has already paid taxes for the city to do but the city has not done?

Obviously a reassessment is going to result in more of a tax increase and the dem council members may have a concern about increasing taxes.   The mayor obviously will have a concern about increasing taxes more than he would in the absence of a reassessment.   But since the city dem leaders have been making homeowners pay the taxes of all these downtown properties and the downtown properties are largely owned by millionaires who are exempt from paying taxes -- i.e., the homeowners have incurred a higher tax bill to make up for the tax revenue that is not collected via the tax exemptions, and these higher taxes are the direct cause of property values falling, wouldn't it be proper for the city dems to immediately remove all tax exemptions to downtown and thus lower the taxes of everyone which will then help prevent values from falling?

And of course, one thing the mayor was correct in saying is that a citywide reassessment won't necessarily reduce taxes.   It will reduce the tax BILLS of those that never grieved but it will increase the tax BILLS of those who have grieved (and won) in the past several years.   But those who never grieved are paying more than their share of taxes since the assessment roll is out of whack because some people grieved and won and others never grieved.

Is it best for the mayor to forget about reassessment and violate state law and let assessments be out of whack?  Is it best for the mayor and his dems to forget about reassessment and allow to people with the same identical houses and same market value to pay vary different tax BILS?

And if there a citywide reassessment, it is a FACT that after all is done, then houses with assessments of probably $70,000 WILL be paying tax BILLS of $6,000 or more while houses in Albany worth close to $200,000 may be paying $6,000 which will show even more how much higher taxes in Schenectady are than other cities.