For many years now, as part of our Legislative Agenda, we have supported some form of a cycle bill.  In fact, item five on our 2009 Legislative Agenda states Support a Statutory Cycle of Reassessment.  The text further states: 

 “The Association will also support a statutory cycle for the valuation of real property that is tied to a statistical trigger. It should establish a multi-year cycle for the valuation of real property. Assessed values would be based on the “Valuation Date” of the roll and other than physical changes to the property and exemption administration, the assessment rolls would remain the same during the multi-year cycle. There should also be some type of statistical benchmark that would be required to trigger a reassessment, such as the COD or a reasonable Sales Ratio measure.” 

Yet, the questions remain, what do we specifically support? What’s the term of the cycle? What are the statistical benchmarks that will trigger a reassessment?  For now the Executive Board of the NYSAA is asking our assessor members only to address the single question; what is an acceptable term of a reassessment cycle?  The question may have been addressed to a few members but the answers should come from those who it affects the most, the assessor membership.  It is imperative that you provide your opinion on the topic in order that the answer to the question is representative of our assessor membership. 

I know that some of you may be irritated by the thought of participating in a reassessment cycle survey and others are very well excited.  This is an important survey.  I know that many believe that we should wait for a determination by the legislature, but I believe we should be on the forefront of this discussion by providing some guidance and letting our opinion be heard.  Often we react to decisions made in Albany but let’s make a decision on this issue and with hope cause a reaction to come out of Albany. 

I do not expect everyone to be happy with the results but the fact is everyone will not be happy if a decision on an assessment cycle was exclusively made in Albany.  I would like to reiterate that your participation is imperative to achieve results that will generally reflect our assessor membership.

The NYSAA Executive Board has provided five options and asks that each assessor use only those as their choice.  The survey has been distributed to the County Presidents.  We are asking the County Presidents to compile the results from each County and report back to us with a total count from the assessors.  The NYSAA Executive Board is requesting that we receive your results via email at nysaa@nyassessor.com, by May 22, 2009.

Let’s trigger the discussion regarding the reassessment cycle!