Poloncarz to establish County Assessor's Office to streamline property assessment countywide

Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz is looking to eliminate the "hodgepodge" approach that is the current assessment system in the county and create a new way to fairly assess properties countywide under one umbrella.

During his State of the County address on Wednesday at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Poloncarz detailed his plans to establish an Erie County Assessor's Office, in order to streamline the property assessment process for all of its municipalities.

Poloncarz says the current systen in the county results in property assessments swinging wildly between municipalities.

"Evaluations are performed by a small group of, often, overworked individuals, who work independently of each other on their tasks. Some municipalities have not reassessed properties in decades, while others are more current, giving a distorted picture of property values in every county. This also results in the state mandating the implementation of an equalization system that truly no citizen understands, and most elected officials don't either," said Poloncarz during his State of the County address. "This balkanized system creates unfairness across the county, resulting in some property owners paying more than they should, essentially underwriting other property owners. This has partially led to the recent homeowner frustrations we have witnessed across the county."

Poloncarz adds Erie County has more assessing units than many states do, proving it can be done more cost effectively.

Currently two other counties in New York State have a similar Assessor's Office in place - Tompkins and Nassau County. Poloncarz believes an Assessor's Office in Erie County can bring a much-needed solution for property assessments that will:

- Streamline property assessment processes;
- Promote fairness;
- Enhance transparency in evaluations countywide;
- Consolidate assessment functions under a single countywide authority;
- Eliminate duplicative efforts;
- Reduce administrative costs;
- Ensure consistency in property evaluations.

"It will also eliminate one of the key reasons why municipalities don't reassess regularly: Local officials are afraid of the community pushback to reassessments, even though the New York State equalization process does lead to annual changes in home value for taxing purposes," Poloncarz noted.

In addition, Poloncarz says the reassessment of properties does not mean tax levies will be raised, as a result.

"Instead, it ensures an equitable redistribution of the property tax among all," he said. It is high time that we at a countywide Assessor's Office to improve fairness, equity and accuracy."

A couple of examples Poloncarz points to with the clunkiness of the current assessment system in Erie County is with the Towns of Amherst and Tonawanda.

"Tonawanda hasn't had a reassessment in decades. Amherst just recently did and, of course, there's been these huge fights. I think if you put it into a unified office, have rolling reassessments, you'll actually have a fairer system and more equitable system, because unfortunately, there are people who are probably paying too much today based on the equalization rate compared to some of their fellow county residents. That's a fairness issue. I think it's time that we really did this," Poloncarz noted.

This was an idea Poloncarz had originally conceived back in 2008 when he served as Erie County Comptroller. However, that idea received plenty of pushback from assessors, and other elected officials locally thought it wasn't the best timing.

"I think with everything that's happened over the last 15 years, now is the right time," Poloncarz stated.

Poloncarz adds while he still expects some opposition from assessors, there'll be a lot less of it than there was when he talked about it years ago.

So how would this whole process work? Poloncarz says it starts with taking over the assessment functions for municipalities all across the county.

"It works best if it's a completely unified system," he said. "It's possible we could do a rollout with a number of towns that no longer want to do it, and we are expecting, based on conversations our Department of Real Property Tax director has already had, there are some towns that just want to get out of the assessment business totally."

And with some of the preliminary talks Poloncarz has had with other local leaders across the county, he says many love the idea of getting the assessment function out of the town's hands and into an independent agency that is the County Assessor's Office.

While some assessors may lose their jobs under this new system, Poloncarz does believe some of them would be hired by the county and work under the Real Property Tax Division, which is where the office would be located.

"The head of our Real Property Tax Department is Scott Bylewski, he's not only an attorney, but he qualifies as an assessor now, because you have to be to be in that job. But you need to have other assessors to actually do the work. So it's not like one person could do it all. You'd have to bring in other assessors and do it as a unified method," Poloncarz said.

While this is going to be a work in progress, Poloncarz believes it'll save taxpayers dollars in Erie County in the long run.