Remember, McCarthy chose someone to be assessor who was TOTALLY UNQUALIFIED.  She had absolutely NOT ONE SHRED of education, experience, knowledge of real estate, appraisal, assessment, etc.   She has never even owned property so naturally has no clue.

Ch 6 had a report about property values and assessment stuff and McCarthy was interviewed, I'll bet his ignorant assessor had input into what McCarthy would say.  Here it is:

Quoted Text

Schenectady mayor Gary McCarthy maintains the rate--which varies among municipalities in New York--is used to make up for a drop in the market since 2009, when the city did its last reassessment.

"The relative portion of what an individual's tax bill is, I believe is still fairly accurate," McCarthy said.

"So, doing the reassessment would not change the individual's' tax liability. So people who think they would see a reduction in their taxes. It's an incorrect assumption."

Homeowners can file grievances to change their assessed values, but McCarthy maintains the tax levy stays the same.

McCarthy says that means the city still needs to collect the same amount of money somehow. It seems homeowners will ultimately keep paying.

STUPID!!!!   STUPID!!!!!   STUPID!!!!!    This is proof of how McCarthy is TOTALLY UNQUALIFIED to be the mayor!!!!!   And assuming his assessor had input, proof that she is EQUALLY UNQUALIFIED.


McCarthy claims that a reassessment will not change one's tax liability.   Where the HELL does he come off making that statement.   A reassessment WILL ABSOLUTELY MOST DEFINITELY change one's tax liability!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What a TOTAL JERK!!!!

He does not understand, and assuming his assessor had input then she also does not understand, first that while property values in a city do fluctuate, they DO NOT fluctuate all the same.  Some areas the values could go up, some stay the same, some go down.  

Even if no one in the city had grieved their assessment in the past 5 years, a TOTAL citywide reassessment would be a CRITICAL, ABSOLUTE NECESSITY.  The reason--as those of us who are intelligent people, are actually taxpayers, and understand this stuff--is because the property owners whose properties have gone down in value would AND MUST have their tax liability reduced.  Those whose properties increased in value would AND MUST have their tax liability increase.  

Some, a  VERY VERY VERY FEW houses in the city had sale prices above the assessment values set 5 years ago, a citywide reassessment must be done NOW, because there is no "welcome stranger" practice.  Houses do NOT have assessments increased merely based on a sale price higher than the assessment value.  However, houses do NOT have their assessments reduced merely based on a sale price lower than the assessment value but the grievance process results in people getting their assessments reduced, however this still results in the tax liability of each individual owner being out of whack because those who bought at higher than assessment value do not have their tax liability increased proportionately, thus those who bought at a price below assessment value will be paying too much tax as they will be subsidizing the taxes of those who bought higher.

Combine that with the fact that some, but not all, homeowners who have not purchased recently have successfully grieved, well the whole assessment roll in the city of Schenectady is out of whack.  And because of that, the tax liability of each and every property is totally out of whack.


McCarthy is correct in that the tax LEVY stays the same (that can fluctuate too, but more often increases from year to year), but McCarthy is a TOTAL IGNORAMUS because he claims one's tax liability will remain the same--it will NOT.  A citywide reassessment will redistribute the tax liability in accordance with the fluctuation in the value of each owner's property.

People in the city really lack common sense.

why have codes AND permits either? or maybe the codes and assessmenmt offices really dont comunicate??  

If the amount one PAYS to the city went UP as a result of the last reassessment, it has to go DOWN if property is reassessed at a lower value. No two ways about it.
How that man can blather for days.

Quoted from Madam X

If the amount one PAYS to the city went UP as a result of the last reassessment, it has to go DOWN if property is reassessed at a lower value. No two ways about it.
How that man can blather for days.

No, it doesn't work that way either.  The impact on the tax BILL (i.e., the tax liability to use McCarthy's terminology) varies on many factors, in fact it will vary even if the tax LEVY stays exactly the same.

If assessments are done in a given year (and assume they really are accurate) and in the next 5 years not one person grieves, not one property's assessment changes for any reason, but in year 6 a complete reassessment is done and each and every property is reduced by exactly 50%, then the tax RATE will double and every property will pay the exact same tax BILL.

Reading that paragraph immediately above, you can understand that with 20,000+/- properties in the city, and various changes to assessments in the past 5 or so years, some went down by 5%, some went down by 90% (such as after a fire or a because of political payoffs), then if the city did a reassessment now and even if EVERY property's assessment was reduced, the change in the tax BILL before a reassessment vs after a reassessment would vary, some properties would have a reduction of their tax BILL, others would see an increase of their tax BILL.

What I'm trying to say is that I know people who bought a house cheap, because it was in rough shape, and then got whammied in the reassessment done during the 'bubble', to the point where they are afraid of losing the house. They aren't unique. If McCheese put things back the way they were previous to that reassessment, and the house was reassessed at its actual value, they'd be fine. I agree, solely putting a different number on paper won't be enough to fix the problem, which is all a reassessment does, really. Lyin' Brian's giant tax hike, that the rest of them all went along with, stupidly, is still causing irreparable harm. It was a one-two punch.
One thing a reassessment would do? Wake up some of the holdouts who don't understand just how bad the situation is. Maybe if they started seeing houses assessed at $70-80 k, with $7,000 in taxes, they'd get a clearer picture.

Quoted from Madam X

One thing a reassessment would do? Wake up some of the holdouts who don't understand just how bad the situation is. Maybe if they started seeing houses assessed at $70-80 k, with $7,000 in taxes, they'd get a clearer picture.

I think I follow you (the paragraph I didn't include in the quote above)better on that, again quite a number of variables.  

But you are 1,000% spot on in what I did post.  And that's exactly why McTHIEF won't allow a reassessment.  If a $100,000 house paid $5,000 (with fees of course), and the assessment was reduced to $60,000 then the homeowner might pay $4,700 in taxes or $5,500 in taxes (depending on how all other houses got reassessed.  Just like if everyone was reduced by 50% the tax RATE would double, so the tax BILL would be the same.  

Quite a major big time embarrassment for this unqualified thief of a mayor.  If you can own a $200,000 (market value) house outside of Schenectady city, outside of Schenectady COUNTTY, and pay $5,000 a year then certainly you don't want a $60,000 (market value) house and pay $5,000.  

Thus McTHIEF wants to keep the assessments high (because too many people don't understand that their assessments are way far above the market value), so it looks better to own a $100,000 (assessment value)  house and pay $5,000 in taxes than to own a $60,000(market value) house and pay $5,000 in taxes.  

Quoted from Madam X

If the amount one PAYS to the city went UP as a result of the last reassessment, it has to go DOWN if property is reassessed at a lower value. No two ways about it

Wrong it's the assessment and the tax levy rate. If the assessment goes down the rate must go up because the revenue line keeps going up under McCheese and his DEM
rubber stamps. Reassessment alone is no answer. Reassessment with Roger Hull as Mayor and Riggi with help on the City Council is the only way exploding taxes and idiotic DEM
spending can be controlled.

What McCarthy is saying, is that the city government isn't going to take a hair cut and ever cut spending.  So however the deck chairs are rearranged on the S.S. Schenectady through reassessment, the amount of total tax revenue is going to be the same.  The pigs at the trough are going to get fed and fed well.

Quoted from benny salami

Wrong it's the assessment and the tax levy rate. If the assessment goes down the rate must go up because the revenue line keeps going up under McCheese and his DEM
rubber stamps. Reassessment alone is no answer. Reassessment with Roger Hull as Mayor and Riggi with help on the City Council is the only way exploding taxes and idiotic DEM
spending can be controlled.

True reassessment alone is not the answer, but spending won't decrease easily.  For example, it would be wonderful if the city eliminated city trash collection, let the property owners pay themselves for private service.  But people on the city won't follow rules so a private company would probably pass right on by and not pick up the heaping piles of trash, then the city would have add more code people.  That's what the city gets for not enforcing it's rules, they made stupid rules dictating the size of house numbers but ignore the rules for sorting trash.  People wouldn't accept, say, switching to a volunteer fire department.  It's doubtful people would accept eliminating the city PD and using the county (but then county would probably have to add staff.

And the mayor doesn't make all his dept heads live in the city and pay the high taxes.  Nor does the mayor force all the business owners who get paid from taxes (via new buildings, renovated buildings, tax exemptions, etc) to live in the city.  King Phillip gets at least a quarter of a million a year and he fled the filthy crime infested city.  That Buicko local CEO of Galesi not only will not live in the city, he won't even live in the county yet he benefits big time.  Nor would Galesi himself dream of living anywhere in the county, but McCarthy sure rewards them lavishly with taxpayer money.  The owner of the local Paul Mitchell place doesn't live in the city, but he benefits.  Mallozzi family won't live in the city and pay taxes here.  That Matt Baumgartner who owns Bombers and Wolff's doesn't live in the city nor even in the county, but sure takes the taxpayers' money.  And the list goes on and on and on.  But McCarthy will NOT force these people to live in the city as a condition of being rewarded with the taxpayers money.  The mere fact that they won't live in the city tells us all that the city is not a place to live.

And McCarthy and his buddies most definitely are not going to make their rich buddies pay taxes, so it's difficult for the residents to have their taxes reduced.  They aren't going to cut the lavish benefits employees get, they won't make them work on Black Friday nor cut the holidays to be in line with the private sector.  Etc.

So reassessment is an absolute necessity NOW.  Again, McCarthy's very own IGNORANT words were, "So, doing the reassessment would not change the individual's' tax liability"   And he is so wrong about that.  It is totally unfair to the people of the city to pay more than their fair share of taxes.  Anyone of us who actually has intelligence on these boards, and who can speak about property values and assessments here, even those with just some common sense knows that the it is a FACT, and undisputable TRUTH that houses in the whole city have changed  in value since the last reassessment and they have NOT changed in the exact same percentage.  It would be a false statement to say that if ALL values have fallen that they ALL fell by, say 20%.  Rather some may have increased by 10%, some fell by 10%, some fell by 20%, some fell by 30%, etc.   So it is not fair that someone whose home fell in value by 40% since the last reassessment should be paying the same portion of taxes.  And of course because some have grieved assessments and won, that means it's even more out of whack.  

McCarthy REALLY needs to fire this unqualified assessor and hire someone who really knows something.  Well, better yet, McCarthy needs to lose the election.

Yup....Mccarthy is as dumb as a fox!!!

Quoted from bumblethru

Yup....Mccarthy is as dumb as a fox!!!

After watching that interview, I think he was trying to outslick Slick Willie.

If only the individual did have a tax liability. McCarthy seems to believe they do.
I can't even watch his attempts at being slick. I accidently saw part of that embarrassing performance of his over on Baker Avenue. I just hope it motivates some people who maybe didn't vote before. That block is mostly renters. I would like to remind people that that street, where the police got stuck responding to a call, contains a pre-school. Yup, the street that was almost impassable due to lack of snow removal, where emergency vehicles didn't have full access.
BTW, someone went to the trouble of painting turn lanes with arrows on that street, at Union, a while back. They were incorrect because there is no turn on red there anyway, and if you had your car too far to the left it interfered with the signal, but the paint is already faded so it doesn't matter. What does matter is areas such as Union at Seward, where the arrows faded away, got redone, and are almost illegible once again. Why keep using the same paint that doesn't last?