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City assessor outlines 2025–26 revaluation plan; contractor KRT begins field work
Summary
City Assessor Phil Drew told the Government Operations Committee the city aims to deliver new values for fiscal-year 2027 after a two‑phase revaluation. Contracted firm KRT started property visits this week; the city will use its own data for 2025 valuations and KRT data only for 2026.
City Assessor Phil Drew updated the Government Operations Committee on the citywide property revaluation the committee put on its agenda for the evening, saying the work is intended to promote “fairness and equity among all the property taxpayers” and that contracted data collectors arrived this week.
Drew told the committee the revaluation has phases: data collection, sales review and validation, market analysis and valuation, field review by KRT (the contracted appraisal team), and informal hearings that will mostly take place in 2026. He said the contract delivery date for the KRT work is July 24, 2026, and those values would be used for fiscal year 2027.
KRT arrived with four data collectors who will initially work on the city’s west side, Drew said, and that the collectors will carry municipal letters of introduction and city badges. He said the collectors will generally rely on existing digital sketches of structures created by the assessor’s office and will validate measurements and conditions rather than measuring every structure from scratch. Drew encouraged owners who are comfortable to permit interior inspections but said the choice is up to property owners.
Drew also clarified the data treatment across years: the city will establish assessed values as of April 1, 2025, using only the city’s own data; KRT’s field data will be used to develop values effective April 1, 2026. “There won’t be any co‑mingling of data,” he said. Committee members asked whether KRT would pick up building permits or recent additions and Drew said KRT will have access to building permit records and should pick up changes they identify in their own 2026 work.
Committee members asked about the new assessing software, Catalyst, and Drew said the department moved into the new system recently and staff are able to use it; he described the transition as going “pretty well” now that the system is in production. A council member raised concerns about possible socioeconomic impacts of rezoning and revaluation on school districts and asked whether the assessor’s office analyzes equity by neighborhood; Drew said the office runs ratio studies by census tract and has not done more detailed demographic analysis.
The assessor offered to bring KRT to a future committee meeting to report progress directly if the committee wanted updates from the contractor. Drew also agreed to return to the committee with brief status reports — for example, how many owners permit data collectors into interiors — to help the council monitor public response.
Ending: The assessor’s office will continue field work in the coming weeks with KRT collectors on short assignment batches (about 500 properties at a time). The committee signaled interest in periodic updates; Drew said formal informal hearings connected to the revaluation process will primarily occur in 2026 and the contracted delivery date remains July 24, 2026.
