|
What benefit did you get by the State increasing the assessment on your property? It actually cost you, the taxpayer tens of millions of your dollars in certiorari refunds and over one hundred million dollars in assessment reductions (commercial property assessment reductions like the Rye Town Hilton settlement). These settlements and refunds have caused Rye Town homeowners to pay increased taxes every year in the form of higher Town, County, Village and of course the most expensive, the School tax.
Now, this is not New York's fault. State law requires that each municipality to assess each property owner fairly, but since no municipality in Westchester County other than Pelham will do this, the State must step in and set a rate (Equalization and Residential Assessment Rates) which most often is wrong, but is the best they can do to establish fairness.
What has Revaluation done? It has established fairness for all property owners whereby you should only be paying your fair share of taxes. Nothing more and nothing less.
Revaluation also protects the integrity of the schools, who for decades had to shift resources and money from our children to pay back tax certioraris. Prior to revaluation, we had over 275 lawsuits. Since Revaluation we had fewer than 40 new commercial lawsuits.
In 2004, Revaluation uncovered millions of dollars in new assessments that had gone undetected. The 2005 updates increased assessments by over 200 million dollars, which increases assistance to our citizens with STAR and Enhanced STAR Exemptions.
The bottom line is that the Revaluation was completed successfully. In fact, the Town of Rye was one of two communities who received an excellence in assessment and administration award from the State of New York along with a check for $52,000 to confirm our good work
I personally attended a hearing in Albany, NY on June 14th, 2005 whereby the Town of Rye successfully shifted over $800,000 of school property taxes from the Rye Neck School District to the City of Rye. Thus saving each Rye Neck School/Rye Town resident over $350 per parcel on their school tax bill. That's real money. The State Board made it very clear that our victory was specifically due to the fact that the Town of Rye had successfully completed Revaluation and our values were irrefutable.
You can contact the Town of Rye at:
Town of Rye
10 Pearl Street
Port Chester, NY 10573
Attn: Supervisor's Office
Or you can e-mail us at:
super@townofryeny.com
Next Page
|
|
