Finance committee approves four-year renewal with Accurate for commercial appraisals

The Waukesha City Finance Committee on Jan. 27 voted to renew a contract with Accurate to provide commercial property appraisal services covering assessment years 2027–2030, changing the reevaluation schedule to one revaluation within the four-year term.

Sam Walker, city assessor, told the committee the current agreement runs through 2026 and the proposed four-year renewal would “cover 'twenty 7 through 2030,” and would “change the reevaluation cycle, so we would only be doing 1 reevaluation in that 4 years as opposed to 2.” He said the change would cut the city’s annual contract cost by “about $16,000 a year.”

Walker said the city began contracting commercial appraisal work after its previous commercial appraiser retired in 2024 and the city was unable to hire a replacement. He described the change to a less-frequent revaluation as a flexible approach tied to market conditions: “If the market just continues to ramp up and up, we can do it in 2 years. If it kind of stabilizes and stagnates, okay, maybe we push it out to 3.”

Alderperson Helbing Slavin asked whether the city would stop doing revaluations every two years; Walker replied that the plan is to allow flexibility and to perform one revaluation within the next four years while remaining in compliance with state requirements.

Alderperson Helbing Slavin moved to approve renewing the contract with Accurate for the 2027–2030 assessment years as presented; Alderman Lemke seconded. The committee approved the renewal by voice vote; individual roll-call tallies were not specified in the record.

The action extends the city’s commercial appraisal services through 2030 and changes the internal schedule for commercial revaluations. The committee did not adopt a permanent two- or three-year schedule; Walker said frequency will be set based on market conditions going forward.