Mineola, NY) My primary goal as the newly elected Chairman of the Nassau County Board of Assessors is to improve the County's property assessment system for all of its over 365,000 residential properties. Once the level of accuracy is improved, Nassau County will be taking the first step in creating an assessment system that distributes property tax obligations in a more uniform and equitable manner and will significantly reduce the overwhelming number of assessment challenges that have created a voracious "cottage industry" of tax grievance businesses.
Clearly, this is not an easy task.
Since assuming office in January of 2004, I have been working each day with the county's reassessment contractor, the Cole-Layer-Trumble Company (CLT), to improve the formulas and models used to establish Fair Market Values for all residential properties throughout the county. Despite reasonable efforts to produce accurate values during the first phase of the court ordered reassessment of all residential properties in just 27 months, many homes were either under-valued or over-valued.
Another positive step undertaken by the County, which I fully support, is the establishment of a professionally staffed full-time Assessment Review Commission (ARC). This effective new entity reduced 46% of the assessments challenged in 2003. More than 80% of its offers were accepted. Any homeowner can file the application form with ARC; those who choose to represent themselves are as successful as those who hire a representative. I think these statistics speak for themselves in establishing the County's sincerity in reforming the assessment and review process. However, I realize there are still homeowners who challenged their assessment and are not granted reductions by ARC or who disagree with the amount of the reduction offered. For these homeowners there is a system in place that allows individual homeowners or their attorneys or tax grievance representatives to file a lawsuit against the County with the New York State Supreme Court's Small Claims Assessment Review Division (SCAR). The hearings are conducted informally and the homeowner does not have to be represented by an attorney or tax grievance specialist.
There is a false impression circulating recently that Nassau County has instituted a policy not to settle property assessment appeals despite the merits of the case. Clearly the statistics on ARC's actions on the 2003 applications show that the opposite is the truth: The County has taken a very energetic approach to resolving grievances before the case goes to a SCAR hearing. The misconception grew from the fact that, prior to establishment of a properly funded and fully functional ARC, homeowners or their representatives had no recourse other than to protest their assessments by filing a SCAR appeal and due to the volume of cases, the County was forced to contract with private appraisal firms at a cost of millions of dollars to settle most of these cases. But the settlement efforts did not begin until the case was ready for hearing. Today, it is the County's expectation that cases that can be resolved through settlement have already been addressed when the case goes to hearing and the County provides the hearing officer with a fair presentation of the facts as its attorneys and appraisers find them.
Most significantly, ARC has reduced the percentage of cases that go on to SCAR by half by cutting assessments before the tax bills are calculated and making offers of settlement. It has sought to further reduce SCAR filings by requesting that attorneys or tax grievance specialists pre-conference their claims for faster processing, rather than presenting their request for reduction only at the hearing itself. ARC has stated its intention to resolve the bulk of the 2004/05 and 2005/06 cases through administrative settlements. There is no good reason why the grievance firms should not accept this offer to resolve cases earlier in the process.
I recognize that establishing a property's Fair Market Value is not an exact science and errors will be made. But until that time when I am satisfied that we have attained a level of accuracy in our assessment system that properly incorporates the unique factors that influence a property's value, I understand that homeowners will continue to file grievances. I also encourage any homeowner who retained an attorney or tax grievance specialist to call them to request a copy of the Application for Correction of Property Assessment filed on their behalf, to verify that all relative information (condition of the home or property location negatives) has been disclosed.
As Chairman of the Board of Assessors, I have a responsibility to ensure that the values placed on all of Nassau County's over 415,000 properties are accurate. I take this responsibility seriously and promise to do so to the best of my ability and with the resources at my disposal. |
