Views on Assessment

In response to the letter "Freezing Assessments Doesn't Solve Problem" found in the Three Village Times August 17, 2007 edition written by George Rand, I reply: why not?

The reason why we are having annual reassessment is because public sentiment and a court settlement was that the previous system discriminated against minority communities. Did it really fix the problem? If we examine the tax burden today, minority communities are still paying an extraordinary amount of taxes. Is this system fairer, or is the problem elsewhere?

Now comes the true litmus test of the assessment department. House values across Long Island, are currently going down. Are we going to see these changes accordingly on our assessment? Or is the assessment department only establish to increase taxes regardless? As of right now, the assessment department have the value of our homes to be increased for next year, despite current market trends. Will there be an updated assessment, or would we be getting a refund of our over payed taxes, or will the assessment department continue with the status quo?

We are currently getting assessed every year, and at what costs to the taxpayers? The assessment department can not and does not control the school budgets, the largest portion of our taxes. The question that arises then is: why do we need them? To what benefit having this assessment bring to the taxpayers? Each year, we are spending tax money to have this system in place, in the name of equality. Current house assessments are no longer unbalanced as they once were. Do we really need to continue with these annual assessments, or would biannual or 5 year assessments be more budgetary and cost effective?

Assessment will not solve the problem of our high tax burden, whether or not we have freezing assessments or not. In order to reduce the burden on tax payers, we need cost effective budgets with the smallest amount of money wasted. Removing annual reassessment in exchange for a longer term assessment could as a result reduce the tax burden by reducing the cost that reassessment has on the tax payer.

Ruth Jakab