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Property tax reassessment

Property tax re-assessment is always a politically-charged concept.

But it made the Early Intervention Report presented to the Warren County Commissioners earlier this week.

The county was last reassessed in 1989.

Mark Morgan, director of Susquehanna Accounting & Consulting Solutions, Inc., the firm who prepared the report, acknowledged reassessment is a “very unpopular thing and I understand that.”

He presented it as “an option, not a mandate… to rebalance the home values and the tax millage assessed to create taxing capacity.”

Morgan said that county is only permitted to go increase millage to 25 mills and that the current rate is 20.5. To cross the 25 threshold would require permission from the courts.

“(But you) can only do that for an additional five mills,” he said.

Reassessment and petitioning the court for additional millage are “options (that) are probably going to have to be explored,” Morgan suggested. “We don’t recommend one over the other.”

He called the county’s period since the last reassessment “significant.

“They are expensive (and) are not popular,” he added, but suggested it might be an issue that needs addressed “at some point in the not too distant future.”

Officials have acknowledged that the county has lost a significant number of tax appeals because the assessment is so old.

Ed Fosnaught, local government specialist with the state Department of Community and Economic Development, said that arguing that reassessment would give the commissioners the ability to raise taxes, “you’re not going to be able to sell it that way.

“It’s a fairness issue,” he continued. “I would guess… that the residents of Warren city probably pay an unfair share and the people outside of Warren city pay less than they should” due to the fact that property values in the city haven’t increased as sharply as property values in the rest of the county.

“Generally speaking, the people who fear reassessment are the ones that benefit the most,” he said.

Commissioner Cindy Morrison asked whether the county could apply for state funds to cover the cost of reassessment.

Ed Fosnaught, state Department of Community and Economic Development local government specialist, indicated that probably was not an option.

Regarding the cost – previously estimated between $1.5 and $2 million – “that’s what we fear,” Morrison said.

Each of the current commissioners addressed the issue of reassessment prior to their election in 2015.

Commissioner Ben Kafferlin asked if the cost would be the “best use” of the funds.

“Now is probably not the time,” he said in 2015. “There is a way for people to appeal if they feel they are unjustly taxed.”

“I do not favor reassessment because of the high cost to the county,” Morrison said. “I don’t see benefit to the county.”

Commissioner Jeff Eggleston said in 2015 that large corporations appeal their property taxes and have their assessment reduced but that for middle- and lower-class individuals “many don’t realize they can appeal (and) have their taxes raised…. Reassessment needs to happen. (It) fixes the formula by which property taxes are assessed.” He said reassessment is “absolutely not a county-wide tax increase” but rather “property tax relief for people that need it.”

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