Onteora assistant superintendent for business Monica LaClair said the equalization rate and higher property values were to blame for Woodstock property owners in the school district seeing a close to twelve percent increase in their school-tax bills. District property owners received their bills at the beginning of September
“In actuality, what the school district controls is the tax levy, the total amount of money that the school district collects in taxes,” LaClair explained at a September meeting of the district school board. “When it comes to your tax bill, we do not control how it’s distributed to the homeowners in the district. So the way the levy is spread out is based proportionally to each town, and the tax rate takes the town’s equalization rate into account. So the equalization rate is determined by another organization, which is the Office of Real Property that we like to affectionately call ORPS.”
The state calls its agency ORPTS, Office of Real Property Tax Services. While the school-tax overall levy increased by two percent, that amount varied greatly by town within the district.
“The equalization rate is the way the state measures the town’s level of assessment. So the town gives each house an assessment. What ORPS does, it looks at the assessment and then says fair market value of your house is higher, lower or equal to what each town assessed it at, and it does that based on actual sales,” LaClair continued. “So it looks at home sales in each of the towns, then it looks at the assessment that’s on that house on its tax bill, and then it gives it a percentage.”
Part of the problem is that the system is based on a sample of homes that have sold. The sampling doesn’t look at every single home in every single town.
“So what happened this year, is if you look at the different towns, the percentage of the levy that they carried in 2022 versus the percentage of the levy that they carried in 2023, you can see one pretty large outlier, and that would be Woodstock,” LaClair said. “Woodstock is currently close to 40 percent of the levy for the district, and has seen almost a twelve percent increase, and that is strictly because of their equalization rate.”
To help clear confusion and address the multitude of phone calls she gets, LaClair showed tax bills for a home in Olive and one in Woodstock, both assessed at $200,000. The tax bill for the Woodstock home is much higher because its fair market value is $419,000, while the Olive home’s value is $219,000.
Trustee Clark Goodrich asked if everyone would get a two percent increase if the district only encompassed one town.
“Yes, because the equalization rate would be the same for every single home in that town. So a two percent increase would be a two percent increase for your tax levy and your tax rate. It is purely because we have six towns and we have six very different towns. That’s really the issue,” LaClair answered. “The homes have sold in Woodstock at double what they’re assessed at. Olive not so much. Even Hurley has seen probably not as large of an increase, but they have seen increases as well.”
Woodstock town supervisor Bill McKenna is well aware of the sharp increases in people’s school taxes and agrees the town is overdue for a revaluation. However, he believes it is more prudent to wait until home prices begin to stabilize. Otherwise, it is possible the town will need to conduct another revaluation in a short time.
There are other factors for tax bill increases, including the loss of exemptions.
“Schools don’t control the exemptions. The towns control the exemptions,” LaClair said.
In some cases, the homeowner didn’t apply for the exemptions this year, or didn’t qualify because their income increased. For example, Social Security benefits have increased.
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