Three years ago this April the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania declined to hear an appeal from Commonwealth Court to effectively stop the planned reassessment in Washington County. This month the taxpayers of the County received the preliminary notice of value for the reassessment which is to go into effect January 1, 2017. A copy of the notice can be viewed here. Washington County Prelim Notice
As far as providing the best information available to property owners, how does the notice stack up to the suggestions we put forth in a 2015 Policy Brief? In that Brief we suggested:
At a minimum any notice of a reassessed value going out to a property owner should include in addition to the new value: (1) the percentage change in their property’s value from the pre-reassessment value, (2) the percentage changes in the total assessed values for the school district, the municipality and the county, (3) an explanation of how much millage rates must drop in each of those taxing districts to conform to state law and (4) an estimate of the three new tax bills for the property receiving the notice. At the very least property owners should receive enough information to be able to determine whether taxes will go up or down and if up, by how much.
At most we could say that (3) is touched upon as the notice does point out “tax rates (millages) will be reduced by all taxing authorities as a result of this reassessment”. But there is no estimate of rates for the County, municipalities, or school districts. There is no percentage change from the old 1981 value, no estimate of what is going on with the values in taxing districts, or an estimate of new tax bills. Maybe this will be coming in a future notice, possibly when the formal change of value notice goes out in July. They certainly could have included data based on the outlook that is on the County’s website on how a reassessment would affect a property owner’s taxes.
