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Assessment office: panel appointments, tax-roll correction, online data and senior-exemption outreach
Summary
Assessment staff told the committee they expect a modest number of assessment changes this year, appointed temporary hearing panel members, filed a correction for an Ithaca parcel and moved to publish assessment data online while protecting addresses.
Tompkins County Assessment Director Jay Franklin briefed the Government Operations Committee on Feb. 6 about assessment workload, panel appointments and outreach to property owners ahead of the March 1 exemption filing deadline.
Franklin said assessment changes this year are low compared with historic mass reassessments; as of the morning of Feb. 6 the office had recorded about 630 assessment changes and expects more after March 1. The committee approved resolution 13060 to appoint temporary hearing panel members (Dean Shea, Josh Lauer and Judy Malis) for commercial and residential review.
The committee also approved a correction to the tax roll for a City of Ithaca parcel (resolution 13061) to fix square footage used for a sidewalk assessment. Franklin explained the county used the Real Property Tax Law authority to recommend corrections when statutory grounds exist.
On data publishing, Franklin introduced resolution 13062 to rescind an older limited-data publishing policy (1999-217) and to make assessment information available in a unified ImageMate viewer. He said the county will redacted mailing addresses and property locations where statutorily required (for example, under judicial security requests) and pointed to recent requests to remove specific addresses from web displays.
Franklin also described outreach related to senior exemptions: the county has been proactively mailing exemption applications to people flagged by New York State as likely eligible and noted the City of Ithaca is expected to vote to increase senior exemption thresholds to the state maximums (examples discussed in committee: $50,000 income for 50% exemption; $58,400 for a 5% exemption). Franklin said the county will mail change notices (AEM program) and expects to send hundreds of change notices in March.
Committee members asked procedural questions about the scope of online data and statutory exceptions. The committee approved the assessment-related resolutions by roll call.
