I appreciate Adam Atkinson’s coverage of the reassessment process, including quoting me about my property’s reassessment from $114k to $268k.

These changes lead to oppressively high tax increases for many people with little validity- if someone offered me 268 right now I’d sell my house and be out in a week, but it will not happen.

Thus far we have been told to use GAR’s nebulous appeal process. Given the botched process thus far, I am uncertain why we would trust the new process any more than the old one.

All this looks like they are being paid to act as a whipping boy for angry residents that must swallow new tax increases whilst keeping the hands of our politicians clean.

 To increase transparency and rebuild trust, I ask they and/or the town to do the following:

• We must know what specific rationale we are appealing. Properties reassessed at 200% or greater of their value should be given specific individualized justification for why such a high rate was determined.
People are worried GAR will mass deny appeals. After appeals are evaluated, release data showing the percent of challenges that were successful and average/median change in assessment.

• Public sessions and resources must be provided to give guidance on submitting an effective appeal (e.g. criteria to include, appropriate comparable selection, points that aren’t relevant, must we pay a private assessor).

• People must be able to review and amend their appeal submissions. Some people have already submitted and this information may change their strategy.

• Detailed methodology must be published and open to scrutiny and comment. Proprietary methods that depend on black-box algorithms are a red flag because even the designers don’t grasp how decisions are made.

• Release further data on the scope of changes in assessed value, as well as proof that houses with large swings in assessment are also, in general, the ones who have the longest time since last reassessment. Show us data on, for example, the percent and number of houses that had an increase in value greater than 150 percent or 200 percent or 250 percent and how many years it’s been on average since reassessment in each category.

In general, the timing of these changes is abysmal, occurring as Clarkson pauses retirement contributions, tariffs raise prices, stock markets plummet, and food prices spike. People cannot afford yet another increase.

Matthew Manierre
Potsdam