Message from the Mayor: Reassessment Next Steps
Posted on: May 24, 2016 - 9:42pm
Fellow Residents;
Over the last two years, the Town of Greenburgh (in consortium with several other Westchester communities) ran a reassessment of all properties in Greenburgh (in which Hastings is one of six villages) as part of a process to update their half-century-old assessment roll. The Town of Greenburgh owns the assessment roll that determines how school, County and town taxes are allocated. (The Village, for historical reasons, has its own assessment roll that has not been affected by this reassessment. Therefore, your Village property taxes, which constitute roughly 20% of your property taxes, are not affected by this reassessment.)
Reassessment Grievance Process
Earlier this year, the Town released its preliminary reassessment values and their potential impact on the school, town and county taxes you pay. Quite a few residents were surprised by the changes, and in many cases the new assessments were felt to be inaccurate. The Town had an informal process by which Tyler Technologies, the firm that was contracted to run the reassessment effort, met with property owners with the intent to correct the obvious errors.
If you were involved in this informal reassessment review (regardless of whether your numbers were readjusted), you should get a notice that will be sent out on June 1st with the new assessment values as Tyler has calculated them. If you're impatient, on June 1, the new values will be on the Town of Greenburgh homepage here (www.greenburghny.com) under “property search”, which is highlighted in yellow. If that assessment value does not accurately reflect what you believe is the market value of your property if you were to attempt to sell it today, then you now have the official mechanism to further seek redress from the Town.
You can schedule a call with Greenburgh Assessor Edye McCarthy for a one-to-one meeting to have your numbers reviewed by calling 914-989-1520 starting on June 1st. You can also schedule a session with the Greenburgh Board of Assessment Review and present your case there. You do this by filing a grievance between June 1st and June 21st. You can go to the Town of Greenburgh website under the assessor’s page to learn about how to do that. You do not need to hire a special intermediary to help you in this process.
You will want to bring all supporting evidence you feel you need to make your case when you show for your assessment review. This can include floor plans, photos, comparables of other similar-sized homes, assessments carried out by third parties, etc.
Three-Year Phase In
Some people may see their taxes go up 40%, 50%, even more than 100% because their homes were seriously undervalued and the process has brought its value into alignment with market prices. For many people, this is an unsustainable increase. To try to minimize the impact on people, Paul Feiner is seeking to have Albany pass special legislation that will allow property owners to phase in their own assessment increase over a three-year period so that they have a better chance to react to the impact. You would need to pass a set of criteria (including, but not limited to, being STAR-eligible and have a Certificate of Occupancy that reflects all changes made to your house), and then you could apply for a three-year phase-in of the assessment amount. The details and wording on this legislation are still being worked out. It will likely be some time before this is in place, and we will keep you up to date on progress.
Sincerely,
Peter Swiderski
Mayor