Peekskill Urged to Approve Property Revaluation
Peekskill’s city assessor is pushing the Common Council to approve the first revaluation of city properties in 56 years.
City Assessor Michele Jordan told the council last week “inequities” have existed in Peekskill for decades with properties that are either over assessed or under assessed. As a result, over the last six years, Jordan said tax certioraris have cost Peekskill $3.2 million and the Peekskill School District more than $6 million.
“The goal here is to mitigate our tax refunds. We don’t know year to year what kind of tax certioraris we’re going to have,” Jordan said.
With a revaluation, the rule of thumb is one-third of property owners will see no change to their taxes, one-third will pay less and one-third will pay more. “Two-thirds are happy,” Jordan quipped.
Peekskill is part of a consortium of nine municipalities that have expressed an interest in revaluation. Ossining, Greenburgh and Yonkers have sought proposals, while Mount Kisco, New Castle, North Salem and Pleasantville are considering it. Bedford has decided against pursuing it.
The cost to Peekskill for Tyler Technologies to study the assessments of all residential and commercial parcels in the city would be $964,000, according to Jordan, an amount that raised the eyebrows of Mayor Frank Catalina, who remarked “Where are we supposed to come up with that?”
Jordan said the city could bond the money over five years and would be refunded over time by the drop in tax challenges that would occur.
“Every year there would be an annual reassessment,” noted Jordan, who also said the study would uncover overcrowded and illegal housing in Peekskill.
If the city agrees to take part in the study this year, reassessment would be completed by June 2016 and would affect the April 2017 tax bills.
Catalina expressed concern about senior citizens suffering the most from the revaluation. Jordan maintained that population would not be directly affected unless they have done renovations to their home that would add to the market value.
Rick has more than 40 years’ experience covering local news in Westchester and Putnam counties, running the gamut from politics and crime to sports and human interest. He has been an editor at Examiner Media since 2012. Read more from Rick’s editor-author bio here. Read Rick’s work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/pezzullo_rick-writer/
