It’s understandable that the idea of a property reassessment makes county residents nervous.

While county residents know there are some properties that are overassessed and some that are underassessed, they don’t know until after the reassessment is complete which camp they fall into. And at a time when inflation is high and everything costs more, homeowners don’t want to see one more cost increase if they can avoid it.

In our opinion, the reassessment is needed. For every person who will scream bloody murder when they see their home’s new assessed value, someone else will be breathing a sigh of relief — before screaming bloody murder when they realize they’ve been paying far too much in property tax for the past several years. In the end the reassessment is about fairness and ensuring that everyone pays their fair share of our county’s tax burden.

There is only one way to avoid this sort of pain in the future, and that’s to reassess properties much more frequently. Reassessments should be done every five to seven years, not once every four decades.

Warren County’s assessments are broken. Much like a broken arm doesn’t just fix itself, the mess created by 40-year-old property assessments won’t fix itself either.

County officials have made a deal to link the reassessment to a land bank initiative as well as a tax abatement program. It’s a deal the county had to make, because this reassessment must be done.