Reassessment: Only About 1,000 Property Owners File for Formal Appeals So Far

So far, only about 1,000 property owners in Schuylkill County have filed for a formal appeal of their tax reassessment. That’s barely 1% of all the 92,000 properties in the county.

The County government and the company conducting the ongoing property tax reassessment expect that number to triple or quadruple as we near the deadline to file a formal appeal but the number so far is disappointing, they say.

Property owners have until Aug. 11 to file a formal appeal through the Schuylkill County Tax Assessment Office. The first appeal hearings are scheduled to begin Aug. 6.

According to Tim Barr, of Vision Government Solutions, the company hired by Schuylkill County to conduct the reassessment, the relatively low number of formal appeals filed so far is in line with the similarly low number of informal reviews of the data collection his company did.

Barr said Wednesday that his company was ready to conduct up to 15,000 informal reviews of the more than 92,000 parcels but only 3,500 were requested.

He urged property owners to file an appeal, even if it’s just to go through the process.

“All you’ve got to do is file that piece of paper by the 11th,” Barr said, speaking of the formal appeal notice. “I’m disappointed more people aren’t going through the process because there are things about mass appraisal where the values are based on defaults. They’re based on assumptions that the condition inside is average. We need people to tell us when that’s not true.”

Barr said the law limits his company’s ability to only conduct a mass appraisal when conducting a reassessment. The reason for that, at least in part, is that it would take years to visit every one of the approximately 92,000 parcels in Schuylkill County and cost about $40 million.

Commissioners Chairman Larry Padora also urged property owners to file an appeal if they think the new assessed value of their property is too high. He said that even if a property owner is seeing that their taxes are going down, they could go lower if the property is over-valued.

Tips and Advice for Formal Appeals

During an appeal, a property owner will have 15 minutes to make the case for changing the assessed value of their parcel. Appeals will be heard before a three-person auxiliary appeals board.

“Be ready to talk about value or be ready to talk about your parcel. You cannot appeal my codes. You cannot appeal the data or the coding or the methodology or the formulas,” Barr said.

He advises that an appeals hearing is “not a court proceeding.”

“It is an administrative appeal before a panel of local residents. It is not a court process. You do not need an attorney. There is no cross-examination. There are no depositions. The burden of proof is on the property owner under the law,” he said.

At an appeals hearing, a property owner should be prepared to present their opinion of value based on evidence they’ve collected. That includes a recent appraisal of their property or recent sales of properties similar to and in close proximity to theirs. Comparable assessments of other properties cannot be used as evidence, Barr said.

Other evidence that can be considered when a property owner argues for a lower value for their property is condition, especially inside a building. The reassessment data collectors only visited the exterior of the property, so they had no way of knowing what was inside.

Barr said assessments were based on that exterior evidence that can be seen and through assumptions.

“There are descriptive things about the property that I encourage people to present,” Barr said. “We have uniform information but it’s not always accurate.”

He added, “Tell us what about your property is unique or that would affect the buyer’s opinion of value. If that house looks a certain way from the outside and it looks like it’s average condition and it fits a certain grading rule that we have, then that’s where it’s going to start. If you’ve never done anything to that house … If it was built in the ’60s and you’ve never done anything at all, then we have it coded too high and the boards can change that.”

General information that could have been changed during the informal review process earlier this year but wasn’t, like square footage, can also be changed.

Barr encouraged property owners to attach that information and evidence to their appeals form when it’s submitted. It could save a property owner the time of going through an appeals hearing process.

He said the County’s Tax Assessment Office will be attempting to review as many appeals applications as possible prior to scheduling. And if they see evidence that convinces them a valuation could be wrong, property owners will be contacted. If both sides can agree on a new value, a property owner will be asked if they want to withdraw their appeal.

Doing that, however, will nullify a property owner’s right to appeal the appeals board’s decision to Schuylkill County Court of Common Pleas.

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