City councilors are continuing efforts to resolve issues of uneven property tax assessment.

An investigation in September found that many high-value homes are under-assessed and pay too little in taxes, according to Syracuse.com. The report said the city has not updated the values of all 32,000 residential properties in over two decades.

The Finance, Taxation and Assessment Committee met Nov. 1 to discuss property tax assessments. David Clifford, assessment commissioner, and his team have been continuing their current pace of changing property assessments to reflect the current market. These efforts have been ongoing since June, following the request of Mayor Ben Walsh and his administration, Clifford said.

 “We’ve been taking a much closer look at these kinds of changes because, over time, the market changes and assessments tend to stay static,” he said. 

 Assessors have been looking at several areas throughout the city, including neighborhoods surrounding Syracuse University, Clifford said. Parts of the city’s Southside and other areas identified as being either under-assessed or over-assessed are also being reviewed, he said.

A hardworking group of professionals are in the assessment office, but there’s a physical limit to the number of reassessments the office can accomplish, Clifford said

 “Our job in the administration is to make sure they have sufficient resources — people, technology — to do the job,” he said. “It’s not an easy thing to do, but we’re committed to it.” 

 Syracuse conducts about 2,000 reassessments each year, said Chief Administrative Officer Frank Caliva at the committee meeting. If the assessment office could do 4,000 every year, it would be a much more fair and equalized system, he said. Limited resources make conducting assessments more challenging. 

 The city is looking at a broad range of possible actions to reform property tax assessments, Caliva said. It considered doing a full, city-wide reassessment, which has not been done since the mid-1990s. Doing so would cost around $2 million, he said. 

 Syracuse is also continuing to look at new technology, advocating for changes at the state level and potentially looking to work with other municipalities to create a better system, Caliva said. 

 Technology is rapidly becoming part of the solution, Caliva said. Technology adopted in Florida has allowed a single assessor to conduct multiple assessments, he said. While these technologies are still imperfect, Caliva said Syracuse continues to look for such opportunities to increase the system’s productivity. 

 Data also allows the city to do assessments in a more efficient manner based on information about the current marketplace, Caliva said.

 “Our goal is for the assessment process to be as fair and consistent as possible,” he said. 

Another report in April found that the 485-a tax exemption, created by state lawmakers to help revive old commercial buildings, has been misused by luxury student apartment complexes. 

 Clifford said the city signed onto this exemption in 2010 and it has been very successful in reviving unutilized space in the downtown area. Certain “loopholes” in the law, however, do allow individuals to take advantage of the generous tax break.  

 Part of the city’s efforts in ensuring an equitable tax system is proposing new legislation to correct the 485-a exemption, Clifford said. 

 “We want to put some definitions in place around what constitutes a conversion,” he said. “That would mean you’d have to keep 60% of the existing building. We’re also proposing at least 15% of new mixed-use buildings be commercial.” 

 Clifford said the city’s next step is to continue looking for ways to make the overall assessment process easier, from conducting more targeted assessments to finding new resources and solutions.

 

Published on November 21, 2019 at 1:14 am

Contact Sarah: scalessa@syr.edu | @sarahalessan