Assessor Levinson Responds to Newsday Article

Newsday's story, "Hard to Assess This Confusion" (3-9-04), unfairly portrayed me as an administrator who doesn't understand what is going on in his own agency. This is far from the truth.

In December of each year, the Department of Assessment is required to send letters to homeowners who have made improvements on their properties based on field inspection or building permit reports that were forwarded to the department at the end of the year. The letter basically alerts the homeowner that the tentative assessed value of their property has been increased based on the reported improvements.

Several weeks after assuming office in January, I learned that the notification letter was never mailed. After consultation with the architect of a recently passed assessment law that imposed new deadlines on the production of the County's assessment rolls, I was advised that the Department of Assessment would still be able to capture any increases in assessed value based on building permits and that letters mailed in February would still meet the deadlines implied under the new law. Only after the mailing went out did I learn of a problem in the notification period provision of the law that rendered the mailing out-of-date.

Once I discovered the problem, I immediately advised Department of Assessment staff to issue a letter to approximately 5,800 homeowners - who did, in fact, make improvements - to disregard the notification. My letter advised that any increase in the assessed value of a home triggered by a building improvement was captured and reflected in the 2006 Assessment Roll that was approved in December.

Unfortunately for 1,200 unsuspecting homeowners, the County's reassessment contractor, the Cole-Layer-Trumble Company, mistakenly assigned a building permit code to their properties even though none had any improvements. This error was quickly corrected and the homeowners were notified accordingly.