The Town of Saugerties Assessor’s office has sent out the 2019 Assessment notification forms. If you are a homeowner in Saugerties, you should have received one. While it may look like your assessment went up significantly, that does not mean that will be the amount your property tax increases. Often the tax rate will go down somewhat to offset the appraisal increase.
If you feel that your assessment is too high, it can be grieved on Tuesday, May 28 at the Senior Center Building on Market Street from 4 p.m.-8 p.m. It is asked that you keep your comments to five minutes. There is a description of how to grieve on the Assessor’s Town website at https://tinyurl.com/y2cvobk5
Michael MacIsaac
Saugerties
Only a fraction of the content from each issue of Saugerties Times is posted online. To read it all, subscribe today to take advantage of our limited trial offer: six months for $15(e-subscription)/$20(print).
Every single home owner should be in that building grieving about their assessment.
Assessments should not be going up at all. People are leaving here daily due to high taxes. We get very little here for the taxes we pay and our school system is average at best. Assessments are very inconsistent and unfair. Did some comps in my neighborhood. How can a very profitable private business like Seaman-Wilsey funeral home be assessed at 287,500 for a 5,500 sq ft former mansion and my 2,000 sq ft average home around the corner be assessed at 242,000 ??? Do some comps for yourself and you will be shocked at how inconsistent and unfair assessed values are. Our town officials and school board members better wake up soon. Property taxes are spiraling out of control!
Board of Assessment Review meetings are open to the public. Do NOT be held outside the meeting of the Board with an applicant by the assessor’s assistant. Everybody has the right to be present while the meeting is in session.
As to the members of the Board of Assessment Review, they are employees of the Town, paid from the Town’s budget. Conflicts of interest by holding seats on other boards and committees may exist.
If you are not satisfied with the Board of Assessment Review decision, you can pay $30 to take the Assessor and members of the Board of Assessment review into the Small Claims Assessment Review court. In that court, the assessor is no longer presumed to be correct, but instead, becomes the defendant and you the plaintiff. If the court decides in your favor, the court may also refund your $30 application fee as well as lowering your assessment.
The assessor runs a tape recorder with audio tape for the entire meeting of the Board of Assessment Review. That means that members of the public are not precluded from bringing in a video recorder for their own use. The town should be broadcasting the meeting over public access television.
“In the name of the Continental Congress, Mandrake, come over here and feed me this ammo-belt.”
My property is assessed the same as someone who has a beautiful home with the same amt of bedrooms and square footage. The problem is that my home is a piece of falling apart crap that floods every time it rains, has an underground stream running through the basement that cannot be located outside and therefore I need to run two dehumidifiers constantly and if the power goes out the basement floods..hence mold. A squirrel got trapped iside my home and destroyed all the windows. The house was not originally a house and hence you can see downstairs from upstairs through the floor boards. My cabinets which were in the home when I bought it are ultra cheap and falling apart etc. It’s a handyman special. Why should I be assessed at the same rate as someone who has a beautiful, solid home? That is downright
creepy.
The rules of the town have become unbearable..nazi like…people are leaving and B&B and Air B&B is swiftly taking over.
The people on the board should NOT be employees of the town. They should be independent.
So much unfairness going on here.
You are living and suffering in a bonafide tear down. I had a tear down for the last 30 years, and instead of tearing it down, I fixed it up, all to no avail. Then it burned down, the firemen didn’t put out the fire correctly the first time, it flared up again, and was looted by the members of the fire crew that showed up the second time. As my doctor told me just today “Bad luck.”
Have the assessor come and visit the place, take photos of its poor condition, and file a grievance by assessment day. You can even show up on the very day that the Board of Assessment Review meets, get your papers stamped as “received” and grieve.
Then, if you are not satisfied, go to SCAR court for $30, with photos (can’t emphasize that enough) and you will win.
Your com parables are only other “tear downs” , but photos are the key. Get estimates for repairs, etc. When the stream is running through, photograph that. If you got animal holes, photo that. Photography is essential to the assessment process.
Go to the town’s government website, and see if any members of the Board of Assessment Review sit also on the Planning Board or Zoning Board, as they are “land use” determinators which, if they have town employees on them (i.e. Board of Assessment Review) constitute a conflict of interest.
Hurry.