Stanley P. Brozana Jr., 72 – Served 37 Years as Orwigsburg Police Chief
The period between April and October may be the most critical time for property owners in Schuylkill County as it relates to the ongoing reassessment.
Next month, property owners will get some very important information in the mail from the company conducting Schuylkill County’s reassessment. That’ll trigger the phases of the reassessment when property owners will first learn what Vision Government Solutions, the company doing the reassessment, believes their property is worth and ends with a new reassessed value.
In March, property owners in Schuylkill County had the opportunity to attend five public meetings to go over these critical stages of the reassessment. If you weren’t able to attend, we have recorded the session held at Pine Grove Area High School and below, we’ve pulled out all the important information property owners need to know about the Informal Review and Formal Appeal processes.
Preliminary Values and Informal Reviews
Next month, Vision Government Solutions will send out a mailer to every property owner in Schuylkill County. That mailer will contain very important information as it relates to the reassessment: it’ll have your property’s preliminary value, as determined by Vision through its data collection process.
With that preliminary value determination in hand, property owners have the right to undergo an informal review with a Vision Government Solutions representative.
Tim Barr, who is overseeing the reassessment process for VGS, calls an informal review a “clerical process” and not a time “to talk about value” of your property.
Now, that mailer will have information labeled “Estimated County Tax Impact”. That figure will be an estimate of how much a property owner’s tax bill will go up or down based on the preliminary value determined by Vision Government Solutions.
“It’s not the final tax amount. It’s an estimate,” Barr says.
What the informal review is designed to do is clear up any mistakes a property owner feels were made during the data collection process. For instance, if VGS says your property has a finished basement and it doesn’t, the informal review would be the stage of the reassessment to bring documentation to that effect.
“That will lower the value but we don’t talk about value during informal reviews,” Barr says. “It’s only about the data. I want people to go through this process. If you don’t think the data is right about your property, please tell us.”
Property owners will have two options for their informal reviews: by phone or in-person. These informal reviews can be scheduled by phone or through the Vision Government Solutions website. A toll-free number and link on the company’s website will be made available when that time comes.
In-person informal reviews will be conducted at the former Schuylkill Transportation System (STS) headquarters at Saint Clair Industrial Park. Barr says if you want to sit down with a person at a computer screen and review the data collected on your property so far, an in-person informal review is the way to go.
Change of Assessment Notices and Formal Appeals
Barr says that on or before July 1 this year, every property owner will receive a Change of Assessment Notice from Vision Government Solutions. He says the date that notice is mailed starts a “40-day clock” for property owners to formally appeal the new assessed value of their home.
“If you think, after the informals and everything, our values are crazy and it’s not going to sell for that, you’re going to want to appeal,” Barr says.
Property owners are advised, once they receive that Change of Assessment Notice, to look at the value of their home as determined by the reassessment firm. If that value is within 10% of what you think it could sell for, “You’re in pretty good shape,” Barr says.
If that value is lower than what you think you could get for your property, it’s unlikely you’ll be contacting Vision to file an appeal. However, if it’s too high, the formal appeal is the likely next step. Formal reviews will be conducted between August and October of this year. They’ll be scheduled by the Schuylkill County Tax Assessment Office.
At a formal appeal, a property owner will go before a three-person appeal board. Schuylkill County government will be creating these appeal boards. The boards will not necessarily be comprised of property appraisers. They’ll contain “people who can make an informed judgment” based on the information given to them.
Barr advises property owners who schedule a formal appeal to show up at their hearing with an opinion of their property in hand.
“If you don’t have an opinion of what your property is worth and some evidence to support that opinion, then you’ve wasted your appeal time,” Barr says. “Present an opinion of value and some evidence to support it. The burden of proof is on you to show the number we put on it isn’t right.”
Now, after a property owner has filed a formal appeal and goes through the process, the appeals board has three options: They can lower, raise, or maintain the reassessed property value. Property owners getting their values raised following a formal appeal is “pretty rare,” according to Barr.
You can watch the full reassessment public meeting held at Pine Grove Area High School on March 24 below …
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