On City Council’s agenda for December 9th is a “will of Council” that “urges the Allegheny County Council and the Allegheny County Executive to begin the process of a comprehensive countywide property reassessment to restore accuracy, uniformity, and fairness for residents and businesses alike.”
There are plenty of proposals and developments in the pipeline that could bring about a countywide reassessment, most of them outside of the control of the county’s elected officials. It is questionable how a non-binding resolution from the city government asking the county to reassess will move the ball forward. The county’s approved 2026 budget does not account for carrying out a reassessment next year.
Within Allegheny County, the County Council’s proposed ordinance to use statistical triggers determined by the State Tax Equalization Board to indicate a reassessment is due has been in committee since April 2024. Two separate lawsuits brought by different taxpayers claiming their assessments are no longer uniform are pending in Allegheny County’s Court of Common Pleas.
Moving to the state level, lawsuits brought by Pittsburgh Public Schools, taxpayers in Allegheny County and an association in western Pennsylvania seeking either a countywide reassessment by demonstrating that the county’s values are no longer uniform or that the state’s assessment policy permitting base year reassessments should be struck down are working their way through the courts. Legislation introduced in the General Assembly to put counties on a reassessment cycle has remained in committee since August.
Based on the December 8th Parcel Counts and Values report of the county’s Office of Property Assessments the city has $19.95 billion in taxable value, which is down 2 percent since the start of 2025. Values have been affected by successful assessment appeals on skyscrapers due to the declining Common Level Ratio (CLR).
Reassessing, and then moving to a regular schedule of subsequent reassessments would ensure values don’t stay in place as long as they have. The CLR would not slip as significantly, appeals activity would be less and taxpayers would not deal with sticker shock and the fear over steep tax hikes from changes in values. Taxing bodies and taxpayers would not have to bring lawsuits in order to get counties to keep values updated.
