good evening i am my role addict the director of the peters township public library and i would like to welcome you all here this evening libraries across the country are transforming the lives in their communities on a daily basis and i hope you had the opportunity to see from our power point here earlier this evening that the peters township library is doing just that behind me is a banner well the lights are down a little that reflects the five different literacies that pennsylvania libraries are using to transform their communities across the state we have the peters township library are committed to doing the same by bringing information and programs forward to our citizens this evening program would fall into the category of civic and social literacy p a a forward and the p t a library envision a pennsylvania where citizens have the knowledge and skills they need to improve their lives to participate and contribute effectively to their communities and to connect with one another through discourse that is the goal of this evening's program like benjamin franklin wrote in a letter and seven hundred eighty nine but in this world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes ben might be surprised to also know that every two days the human race creates as much information as we had from the dawn of civilization until two thousand and three that's about five  data per day but too much information and mis information can become a problem that is exactly why i'm so pleased to introduce tonight's speakers who will help us this evening to understand more and get the correct information about the reassessment process our moderator this evening is harlan schober he is serving his second term as washington county commissioner washington county government is one of the largest organizations in our region providing crucial services to over two hundred thousand residents prior to his election as a washington county commissioner mr schober served as chairman of the shar tears township board of supervisors susan mon dickey has been a partner at since two thousand and three susan also serves as special counsel to taxing authorities litigating tax assessment appeals before the board of assessment appeals the court of common plea and appellate courts she graduated  from college double majoring with the b a in english and economics and from the pittsburg university of pittsburgh school of law and scott fergus is the director of the ministration for washington county since two thousand and four scott has been a practicing attorney at fergus martin and fergus in washington county for over thirty years mr fergus is a former member of the city of washington counsel and a former washington county commissioner he is a graduate of allegheny college and the university of pittsburgh school of law we've distributed to many of you cards for our question and answer period which will occur after the presentations so without further ado i have harlan to introduce to you i'm glad to be here at the request of the library mara thank you very much appreciate the invite all right going to do so again one more time i'm harlan county commissioner and there are some contact information right there for you if you want to do it real quick so you can have time to record it maybe but that's all right too we also have scott fergus our director of ministration and his contact ensues and he's partner peacock keller so there are some information that we're always available i think if there's something you really need to ask i'd also like to say that diana irey vonne one of my fellow commissioners to sit here welcome diana you know the saving you know we're going to hit the object of hopefully of what are your understandings basic understandings versus misunderstandings and then we just give you one example of a misunderstanding said my assessments going to go from forty two thousand eight hundred twenty nine dollars to five hundred thirty four thousand dollars ok but then it goes on to say that in your taxes for next year two thousand and seventeen could go as high as eighty five thousand dollars now this is an i've been around the tax process we've been doing this for three years if i would have received that letter at home not knowing what i know about what we've been doing in the process that would knock me off my chair and i'm sure if anyone seen anything like that and others have received that but that is the kind of information hopefully tonight will dispel so moving forward on this hard gender tonight's going to try to bring the objective of you having a better understanding of what we're doing with reassessment washing county for next year and we won't have all the answers for everybody but at least you should be thinking a little bit clearer on the issues rather than what you might hear from your neighbor or someone else we're going talk about how we got started real quick why reassessment the process evaluations examples of formal pill and then we're going to wrap up hopefully quickly and give you a chance to ask questions fair enough by the way thank you for this turnout we started with thirty five or so in the multipurpose room at the library we went to two hundred at the middle school when you see what's tonight here at the high school i thank you for your concern and and showing support i know it's things you want to know and that's why you're here but i appreciate that in the beginning let's just start real quick to school districts back around the two thousand and eight timeframe said we need to do reassessment we went through the process of that we want to know but it's going back and forth and bottom line is we then hard tither technologist which is a vendor one of two vendors in the state of pennsylvania that really could handle our size of assessment and basically we seven million dollars that's what it's costing for us not to gain any money at the county we are one thing that's good for us is that the money is coming out of act thirteen marcellus shale dollars so we really are not to be spending tax dollars a do the reassessment if that's a good thing that's the only thing i could pick out so far on that the software was important for us why did we pick tither because we've been using software from the seventy's and so we've brought new technology integrated systems which is my background in software and computers we bring that together with the tyler we're going to use the software for the future at large you to look at information on properties quickly and do it in one system and that we needed after the tax office the these traders office and others that use a system why everyone and thanks again for coming out it's such a beautiful summer evening and it's really heartening to see that so many people would choose to come out and be informed and learn more about the reassessment process one other side note when myra introduced me and my educational background she forgot to mention that i am a peters township alumnus and if you would have told me thirty five years ago that i would be up here speaking to five hundred people i would have never believed it but i'm glad to be here tonight and to answer some of your questions  so my firm serves says these solicitor to the washington school district and it all started with a washington school district back in about two thousand and seven when they got the idea for a reassessment why do we need a reassessment the main reason is state law it's found under article eight section one of your pennsylvania constitution it's the uniformity clause and says that all taxes must be equal upon all subjects that means that your real estate taxes are the same whether you're a residential property owner or a commercial property owner and everybody is taxed at the same rate and the constitution requires that everybody pays their fair share so why did washington want to file for reassessment the only way to attain that uniformity is by having an entire county wide reassessment and i'll tell you why in a minute you we could found that we couldn't rely on the taxing bodies mainly the school district to file assessment appeals or for property owners to follow assessment appeals when there were bad numbers the only way to correct any inequities was to file for a county wide reassessment what initially prompted the school district to begin these discussions was in two thousand and seven a commercial property known as the washington trust building on main street i'm in downtown washington found an assessment appeal they weren't the first ones there were several commercial properties who had filed in the past year or two and if you know anything about the washington school district there's not a lot of commercial property the city of washington is the county seat so there's a lot of governmental properties and they are inherently exempt from taxation we also have washington and jefferson college and the washington hospital which are charities that are exempt from taxation so a lot of these commercial properties had attorneys and they became aware of something in the assessment law called a common level ratio that was changing dramatically for washington county and these commercial properties were falling assessment appeals the base year is a term in pennsylvania for our assessment program will actually go back to our base year washington county is and has been one nine hundred eighty one the last countywide reassessment finished in one nine hundred seventy nine that's when they finished collecting their data years peters township in washington county has changed dramatically but when somebody files and assessment appeal and a base year system like we have in pennsylvania they use something called a common level ratio that the state puts out looking at sales versus assessments so when the washington trust building filed their assessment appeal in two thousand and seven the common level ratio for washington county was increasing by leaps and bounds every year and when you follow an appeal what you do is you look at your assessment times that common level ratio to determine something called an implied market value so the washington trust building was assessed at two hundred eighty seven thousand five hundred dollars again your base your value was a fourth of your nineteen eighty one market value so that meant that the trust building was worth back then about a million one hundred thousand dollars when they felt their appeal the common level ratio went up from six point one seven to seven point three so you can see their assessment times the common level ratio what it gave them in an implied market value over those she attacks years in question so over four years there implied market value went up three hundred twenty four thousand dollars so what these commercial properties were doing their attorneys would follow an appeal every year and say the common level ratio went up so we want our assessment to come down and the school district could not defend that because the washington trust building in the city of washington was not increasing in market value by those numbers in fact some might say the city of washington was deteriorating and property values were declining why was this common level ratio so high then well the reason is between two thousand and four and two thousand and seven property values were growing in northern washington county such as peters township cecil township nor strobing and they were bringing that number up because it's a county wide number so even in the city of washington where properties were deteriorating that number was going up big because properties were appreciating in market value in northern washington county so the school board came to our firm a solicitor and said we're settling all these the sussman appeals we can't defend them this isn't fair because the commercial property owners have attorneys they know about this common level ratio they're getting an a reduction every year and their assessment which means we have to increase our milledge every year and that is affecting the homeowners and the washington school board said this is not fair this violates the uniformity clause the taxation is not equal it's unfair because the homeowners who don't know any better are paying more than their fair share of taxes and the commercial properties are paying less because they have appealed their assessments that is why they filed for a county wide reassessment mcguffey school district was one of the other plaintiffs in that last lawsuit if you know anything about mcguffey you'll say well where's their commercial  property they didn't file because of commercial properties mcguffey school district has a lot of coal reserves and those are taxed and the owners of the coal companies knew that this common level ratio was changing they were appealing every year they were getting reduction the value of the coal reserves mcguffey school district was losing its tax base they were increasing their taxes every year which increase the residential taxes was unfair to the homeowners who weren't appealing some mcguffey's joined in the lawsuit and  asked for a reassessment for the same reason but the bottom of this screen it says a base year system freeze this some assessments permits others to be taxed at one hundred percent of their fair market value so the washington trust building was appealing they got reductions every year so they were only paying taxes on their market value were homeowners might have been paying on one hundred ten percent or one hundred and twenty percent of their market value so that's why we needed a reassessment it was the only way to get the uniformity and equality and major factors would put that up there that was part of our complaint in the thirty five years since the last county you've had population shifts you've had inflation factors you've had changes in construction do you realize that every home built in the last thirty five years had to be assessed at its one thousand nine hundred one market value so when you build a house  peter's township in two thousand and fifteen and you got your op occupancy permit and the building inspector went out in the county assessor went out they had to say what was that new construction worth in one thousand nine hundred one and again i grew up here in  know what construction techniques were like i know what houses were like in one nine hundred eighty one the houses that are being built today are so much different there was no way to adjust those values back to one thousand nine hundred one dollars are a whole county was becoming out  you stand by the mike you're i think that this might not be working we didn't turn on probably so recess and process let me walk you through a process i'm not going to bore you but i got to get to so you know what i know is that fair or how do we go bout it the magnitude of the reassessment process over one hundred twenty thousand properties countywide had to be looked at of those approximate five thousand or so of the commercial industrial properties and over eighty two hundred clean and green properties that's a big problem to work on at one time and that's why it's taken us time to go through almost three years of process and basically that's also why it's taken this time to even get to these preliminary numbers that we're going to talk about the night and i want to make it clear the numbers we're showing are the first cut we just received is a week ago it doesn't include some of the appeals are going to happen that you may all be involved in the time it doesn't also come for some exam properties here and there but so we're really trying to give you an estimated number so you can get a feel so that you have an idea where the tax structure and what's going to happen to you as we move through to the new assessment numbers now we talked about getting the best data so what we said we have to have close interaction with all of you is property owners so we made a contact that was the first step out to visit we took pictures we went and visited every site they were supposed to so we assume that all right and they stop with everybody to collect the data to try to be as accurate as possible about your home and your property i know my wife said she went out and helped measure the house with the person that came around trying to make sure it was being done right because that means we're going to see as we go forward if you weren't available the idea was that there should be a data collecting hanger on your door or please fill that out they were told on their sen into the county right and fill it out tell us what's really at your house since no one talked to send it to the county within thirty days to we're trying to do the best together all the accurate information you know the last time we did this what nine hundred seventy nine or so so we're really out trying to get all the m and tory of properties so we least we can start understanding we have a good base the data mailer was the next thing that came out i'm sure some of you got and everybody should have got one but if you didn't there were people said i didn't get them we made sure that they got one the data mailer was again reinforcement here's your property is it what it really is if it isn't contact the essman office tyler and make sure that it's right because that was the first step on the accuracy as we move forward the process then the process says we're going to start establishing value once you've collected all the data which we did over the months we had to verify it make sure that was right answer questions on it and we said we're going to start doing some evaluations to try to get to values on property everybody knows c s i we watch it on t v all the time c s i also stands for cost sales and income that's sort of a method of putting a valuation is an assessment on property income is only for your commercial property this is not for residential so bottom line is that's just something that's used in the commercial industrial where income on businesses kind of equates into part of the formula to help come up with the value of that property so we walk through it then we say we have analysis we have approach and we have training the analysis piece looking at neighborhoods trying to analyze what's there what market peters township sections of peter's township also the approach using cost what's sales over the last five years in your neighborhood you know around the whole county what kind of numbers to you have that you could basically used to try to come up with the value in your for your property in your area training nationally titers not familiar with washing counting like some of our people at sas when office there was a lot of training and a lot of collaboration between our county recessed one people and the toddler corp who was coming in to do the assessment that we had hired him to do then did a file you review naturally we've collected all the data we had all the attributes we compared data sales around your area has we said then if i had outliers what's an outlier is a lot of different things that come up but if you have a small community here  have a new community there and you have two miles in between of homes it just scattered throughout become more of an outline or maybe you know houses sold in that area so they wanted to look at all these to make sure they came up with assessor values at the end of this process that reflected that area as a total from that they they put a new market value our first new market value on all their properties back in march they mailed out a memo out to all of you saying this is your initial assessment you had options on it then sure you could either sign up for an in formal appeal or you could say i think i'm ok i'm ok we're mad and you moved on and didn't do anything why would i say what would i say that you should have done and it's not too late so don't get disturbed over that but what would i have done i looked at is that number that i'm seeing reflective of what i think my property is worth can i sell it for that i just built my home three years ago i pretty much knew what i had in my house so i looked at that then you looked at and i looked at the neighborhood which i'll tell you how you could do that and still do it and you look the same like consistent with my neighbors in my neighborhood not down the road not in did chart tears somewhere else peters township i know we have people from all over the county here but what am i doing is i my consistent for this type of home in my neighborhood and as a local right the right value if you don't like that over fourteen thousand people decided that they were going to make an informal pill or contact the office in some way and out of those fourteen thousand people that did that proffer the seven thousand actually had some kind of a change made to it but some of these changes were  three bedrooms not for what does that do and it really doesn't change a lot because they're using square footage but people were able to answer a lot of questions because they could go in informally and try to work out anything that they thought wasn't right and  least get answers to questions so basically that's what you had now we move on we talk about full transparency of the data and what that means to me is that there is a website and this is something we're going to hammer in two or three times tonight the website for the washing county has information on their tables on there now information about how to understand your tax assessment process and we're going to try to explain a lot of that tonight so looking at that that web site basically you could go in by name you could go in by address you can go in by parcel number you can look at yours and you can look at any one if you know the information around the whole county to try to make those comparisons that you need to say is this something that i'm being treated fairly or not fair enough so as we went through this that websites up and live well i've used it a whole lot in the last few weeks susan i'm sure you've looked at it too and diana i mean the questions come in but it's there and i'm investigating my own property to say am i being treated fair just like what all of you are thinking right status today then i can get off with someone else talk for a second status today the final notices were mailed out after the july first date the formal pill process starting you're already putting your appeals in by august tenth if you really want to appeal but that's your right if you don't feel comfortable pill you can always cancel later so anyhow august tenth would be the cutoff for  appeals and then we have five boards that have been put together fifteen people on five boards with eight alternates that are going to be listening to a pils who are these people they're just people like us around the whole county that have volunteer it's going to be a tough couple months for those people they really have to be full time available it's going to be a lot of four days and they're going to try to walk through all the pills that we see between august the ten and july third and october thirty first the values that are being put on the property are based on july first of two thousand and fifteen we had a cut off somewhere so last year's values whatever they saw as of last year by july first that's the value that's being utilize a reassessment that's rolling out the impact on taxes i know that's what we're all going to wait to hear right now so the impact on taxes your county and municipal taxes are going to start january when you get your building in january two thousand and seventeen that's why by the code and by everything october thirty first we've really got to get through this process so that the municipality is and everybody can figure out what their militia will be because they have to act on them on their budget before the end of the year ok the school taxes next july two thousand and seventeen eighteen school year now some of the numbers will use today have taken into consideration i believe the school district is raise the milesian peters you're going to see that so it can reflect the current anything else i'm not sure we used them yet but scott can address that as we go now i'm going to ask our fergus to come up he's going to walk you through some numbers evaluations ratios and things like factor so scott pl doesn't think that base your assessment is a very good way to do it i have property in florida and i think that's a better way to do it but we're where we are where we are and were going to do the best assessment that we can  the first thing on the i want to emphasize is that this is very to be revenue neutral the reason for a reassessment is not to raise more money the law prevents it but it here's here's the county and this is what we're working off of this year as a laser i think somewhere in that county taxes under the old us as but it was one billion ok county taxes under the old system where about one point six billion dollars that one point six billion dollars with no tax assessment of twenty four point nine mils raised for us one point six billion to seventeen billion and what the county is planning to what we're budgeting for next year is that because the tax values have gone up tax mi come down in the same proportions if you would divide the old assessment into the new assessment you get a factor of ten point five three and again this is not you can laugh the what the county is planning next year been budgeting for is to reduce our milledge by ten points by a factor of ten point five three so that next year using a new assessment of seventeen billion for him forty seven million dollars i knew milledge rather mean twenty four point nine is going to be two point three six and that's going to raise the same forty one million two hundred sixty three thousand dollars there are there are even though the pot every each of the townships in this school district in the county are going to remain the same in the county that pot is forty one million some people's taxes are going to go up and some people's taxes are going to go down  probably the best example of taxes that are going to go down would be dinora dinora is a mill town in one thousand nine hundred one the mills were were working full time real estate property was improving and then we all know what's happened since then i was in or the other day and not only they don't have a bike they don't have a mcdonald's but somebody was lamenting they don't even have a liquor store those are those values and that there is what we have to do when the county adopts its tax millage for next year it has to do so based upon the revenues that it raised last year so if you're going to raise taxes you have to have to vote one vote is a neutral milledge the second vote is if you want to raise taxes so it's totally transparent in this kind of surprise be out of reassessment will be able to slip a little bit of money in there but it doesn't work that way so what you have the second second vote is just like any other tax increase and you can hold all of your councilman responsible for what they do your school board members responsible for what they do and you'll know exactly what that is i'd like to get through a couple examples this is a house and i just picked these randomly so some have gone up some they've gone down this is a single family house purchased in peters township in one thousand nine hundred seven for two hundred seventy two thousand dollars it's assessment then remember to twenty five percent says been was forty one thousand two hundred twenty two dollars it's new market value you're going to get a tax decrease and if it's less you're probably going to get a tax increase and you can check in here with these numbers until in the factors for each of these municipalities is the same as the counties it's taking the old cessed value and divide it into the new assessed value and coming up with a factor each of these each tax a district will have a different factor in washington county as you know we've said is ten point five three in peter's township it's eight point nine seven and the school districts sense it's one one municipality school districts also eight point nine seven so what's going to happen here is in again it's by law at it there but the washington county tax is going to go up by and this is a this is a assessment that went from forty one thousand to four hundred thirty seven thousand which probably sounds familiar to a lot of you here but the county tax is going to go up seven dollars the township tax make up around one hundred dollars and the school district and this is based on this year's mill is coming up your bill which will go up  is another peters township property in the new market value assessment as two and three hundred nineteen thousand again using those same factors ten point three eight point nine seven eight point nine seven the milage is going to be reduced by those amounts so that is case the taxes are going to be reduced and again if you multiply the old assessed value by the factor and it's more then the new assessment you're  can have to do the calculations for each of the taxi waterways in order to determine what your taxes are going to be just can't use one factor and this is an example of county taxes are going to go down twenty five percent the township taxes are going down fifty six forty six percent and canada going going to go down thirty two percent here's one body hand that would have ringgold and again the facts are two thousand three hundred sixty two thousand dollar house the old assessment thirty thousand new assessment two hundred ninety seven thousand and it's the same alone or down three four or five percent i guess in the ringgold when one percent oh all this information is on all this information is on our website you can get the fat you can partial viewer and what that is is a badge a program that shows all of the types pap's in the county with roads and what what have you so that you can look at and put in address come up with a factors i think that pretty much you're probably going to have a lot of questions so i will allow you to do that and you'll get more answers and we can stay afterwards and actually go over specific problems as if you like to and i think now if you're unhappy this going to do to me i think that explanation of these gives you an idea that things are just said to bring it in line and by looking at the website i believe if you have a question asked me we can always answer at doesn't mean you don't want to pill at the miss that dan think we're going to do the bill process now i would jump around little bit so i'm going to ask ok i'm going to talk about the appeal process but i wanted to reiterate what scott said about those milledge rates have to come down that's required by law and i'll talk about that some more at the end and also harlan started out by showing you a letter that he received from a law firm that insinuated that those military it's would stay up in his new taxes would be calculated at those rates well that is just false that that's not going to happen but if you don't believe anything else that we said tonight and you still want to file an appeal you have until august tenth two thousand and sixteen however every property owner has the right to appeal their assessment every single year so again if you want to wait and you don't believe our presentation that your taxes aren't going up you can wait and see what your tax bill is next spring for the county and the minister palette and next july when your school tax bill comes out and you can file an appeal next year normally you have have to file an appeal every year by september first but in the year following a reassessment they move that deadline up to say august tenth so this year you have to file by august tenth but you have the right to appeal every single tax year by september first so again if you want to wait and see what your true tax simplification is you can wait until next summer if you want to found appeal you must file this appeal form with the county office of tax revenue it is on the county website the library also has a copy of the form on their website and the library's website has a link to the county website so you need to file that of that form by august tenth of this year it's the same form if you would file next summer by september one some of the rules for hearing procedures washington county does have a set of rules for appeal hearings the board of assessment appeals must follow the rules and all the appellant's must follow those rules those rules are also on the library's website and there's also a link to the county's website and those rules are on there but i wanted to mention a few of those rules the first is that the aggrieved party must be present at the hearing and if you do not show up your appeal would be dismissed you can have somebody go on your behalf with a power of attorney so if you have an elderly parent and you have power of attorney for them you can appeal their taxes and appear on their behalf using a power of attorney however only license attorneys can practice law before the board of assessment appeals so the board will not accept powers of attorney from realtors or consultants or just the neighbor who wants to help you out with your assessment appeal so you have to be a licensed lawyer or it's the unauthorized practice of law the hearing begins with the county putting your assessment into evidence and that's prime a facial evidence of the fair market value of your property then the burden shifts to the person filing the appeal and you then have the burden of proving that the market value is something different you can present evidence regarding the market value of your property that usually is your testimony it could be photographs or the best evidence is an appraisal if you have an appraisal the local county rules require you to file your appraisal ten days before your hearing with the board of assessment appeals if you have not met your burden the hearing is over if you have to  that your market value is other than what the county says that is the hearing concludes but if you have brought some evidence and you've met your burden then the burden shifts back to the county to prove how they arrived at your market value and there will be somebody there from the county assessment office at every hearing and they will have comparable sales and they will produce evidence as to how the county arrived at your assessment the hearing will conclude and the parties will be dismissed you will not know the outcome that day but they will mail a decision to you and then any party has the right to appeal the board's decision within thirty days to the court of common pleas  if you have no change in your assessment you can appeal to the court of common pleas if it was changed any of the taxing bodies can appeal and there are three taxing bodies that are interested in your assessment that the local municipality the local school district and the county and any one of those can appeal your assessment to the court a common pleas so we always say be careful with you appeal your assessment somebody could challenge it and it could actually be raised  again there's the website where the rules can be found and hartland you want me to talk about them ok when we talked about the tax rates actually i want to go back to scot slide and show you  let me use the cecil township one just to explain what those numbers mean again this family these are real properties by the way they pulled these properties out for these examples this homeowner purchased their property in two thousand and three for two hundred ten thousand dollars the current assessment again pennsylvania has a base year system our base year was one nine hundred eighty one all of our assessments are a fourth of the one nine hundred eighty one market value so when they bought this house in two thousand and three it was already assessed at thirty three thousand seven hundred fifty dollars which was a fourth of the one nine hundred eighty one market value now the county went out and they're saying the current assessment which is the current market value is two hundred eighty three thousand four hundred dollars and that's probably pretty realistic if they bought the house in two thousand and three for two hundred ten thousand over thirteen years it probably did appreciate to two hundred eighty three thousand so the property value went up about seventy thousand dollars and the last thirteen years so that's probably pretty close to what a lot of our are properties the current milledge is if you add those up in the left hand column more about  hundred forty mills well now there milage is going to go down if you look in the right hand column and the reason why is pennsylvania legislature has something called anti windfall legislation they said that  taxing bodies who were not part of this reassessment process can't have a revenue windfall as a result of this countywide reassessment so they enacted legislation and that's at the end of the presentation here and there's two different statutes that apply one is for the minutes the pallet and the county and one is for the school district this is the first one that applies to the minister pallet he and the county as scott said it has to be revenue neutral and the county and the local municipality have a two step process one they have to look at the new assessed value and then they have to decrease their millage so that they get no new taxes levied in the year after reassessment and actually that's the correct term it has to be taxes levied not the revenue that they bring in because they're all always people who don't pay their taxes so the taxes levied in the year after the reassessment have to be exactly the same as the taxes that the missa palate he and the county had levied the year prior so it's revenue neutral that's thirty first step then their second step is if they want to have a tax increase they have to have a separate vote but that actually by the anti windfall legislation can increase their taxes levied that year by more than ten percent now we already know washington county for county taxes will have no tax increase next year the county commissioners have set them a right there's no tax increase for the county next year so we know what their milage as they've already determined that they're not doing the second step of that procedure it'll be the same now every minister palette he has the right to increase their taxes levied in the year following that reassessment by no more than ten percent of the taxes levied the year prior that's not ten percent for each property owner that's ten percent overall can only increase that tax levy by ten percent overall so again your township and urbanists polity taxes are a very small part of your tax bill the school taxes the majority of it so they can only increase the taxes levied in their whole minutes the pallet by ten percent in the year following a reassessment some of them may have an increase some may not be you will know what it is because of this two step process it is transparent and you will know exactly what that is school districts are different and this is something under act one of two thousand and six called the taxpayer relief act ever since two thousand and six school districts have been limited in the amount that they can increase your tax millage and it's limited to an index which is tied to inflation for peters township school district this year it was two point four percent i believe and i am not here is the solicitor for the township speaking but that's what i believe it's two four point zero point four percent it varies again by minister palette he but i think everybody in washington county under three percent for the amount that the school district can increase its taxes levied every year and there are only two exceptions one is they can go to a voter referendum and the other is they can apply to the pennsylvania department of education and there are certain exceptions one is if they have to make a pension contribution and the other is if there are special education costs have gone up but basically for the school districts whether you're here in peters or some other district they can only increase taxes levied next year by an index which is probably going to be two and a half percent or less across the board so again that doesn't mean you as an individual would increase your millage by two and a half percent it means that the entire school district cannot levy taxes more than two and a half percent next year so again taxes are not going up that's hopefully the one thing you'll learn tonight but there are reasons that you may want to appeal your assessment maybe you feel there was something wrong with the information that the county assessment office gathered and that the value of the value they put on your property so you do have the right to appeal this year but if you're only here because you're concerned about your taxes wait and see what your tax bills are next year particularly next summer when the school district issues its budget and your new tax bill and you have the right to appeal next year thank as we were talking about the pill process and what we can do also and i don't know if i mentioned this if i did only repeat it that right now if you see something in your assessed value on your property that's what i call black and white and let me use an example let me say that your house is x sided home and not brick ok there's a value difference so let's say your house is siding and they have on your record it's brick home  guess what that's going to impact the value of your own if you have something that's very very clear that says you have no house on your property and it shows a house on your property pretty black and white right you can still contact the assessment office not the pill process you can follow appeal if you want to and use that if you want to but you can call in right now and you can say i found this this is wrong after all the things we tried to do to make sure the data was accurate there are still going to be things out there that are wrong so if you see something that's very clear please contact our sassaman office and say look this is what i see what do you see maybe the house size maybe they say your house is fifteen hundred square foot and you know it's only a thousand square foot somebody has something wrong right please contact the office and then do it real quick so that maybe that if you don't like what you hear you still have a chance to appeal by the all that's tense date fair enough i'm sorry i don't have the number diana do you know the number for this in the us and just call the county number say i need the assessment office and we'll get you there fair enough all right so with that we're going to do a i guess what we call a wrap up in question this is really important i think we took a little over an hour we're going to write thank you diana c s where you bring good help with you and bring all my bosses with me phone number for this segment of seven two four two two eight six eight five zero ok now please if you call and say i don't like my taxes i don't like this or that that's not what we're talking we're talking about something that's very black and white correct it get a reassessment and otherwise you do your pill thing ok now i guess the panel is going to answer questions we have a few  we have some students that are going to be picking up questions we'll have baskets and we're going to get the lights up a little bit and we'll move the table up so that scott and susan can be a little more visible to you so if you have something that you wanted to that you had on your mind that you want to have answered we'll be collecting those so i think i see some students out there with their baskets do we have basket we have questions already oh harlan already has some questions so that's wonderful all right here we go i have a question for everybody does this give you a little bit more clear understanding tonight i mean there are still a lot of individual things there's still a lot of individual questions i'm sure you have on your own properties a lot of different things some of the questions may some of the questions may pull those out but let's go head and see what we have to do here thank you scott and susan for helping this evening you know one of the questions is stood out real quick was what's the milledge the millage basically depends on what you're talking about county and the support for school district right is we've seen the peters township if you live in pater's i think we have people from all over the county here so let me just say if you're from pages township you basically have a pretty good idea what the milly's is off the charts county wise it's two point three six mills across the county that's pretty consistent but if you want to find that out if you don't live in and you didn't see your numbers or you can see the can the mcmillan where you didn't see the ringgold or whatever ok go on to the website look at your brain this a power to your school district which is the information it's there you take and you divide the  factor into your current milly's either of those entities and you come up with your new milly's rate that simple you apply that time as your new assessment and you can go home tonight and say wow my taxes are going down going up i had a gentleman that was with me yesterday in my office today he was irate yesterday on a bike thing for the blue knights that we disparate dissipated in and he said my taxes are going up the going up i can't do this what's going on we sat down at nine o'clock this morning he actually onto property some country property his taxes are going down he said i can sleep tonight so the misconception is the misinformation is what we're trying all going to be in the point one something point to something so be point zero zero one point then the when you get to the school district which is the big one if the point zero eleven zero twelve whatever and you're going to come up with the right number if you have a question just start talking to the kids they know how to do all this stuff or is that for my grandkids know everything so the millage is going to depend on where you live you can look at the thing using what scott davis tonight and that should give you a good  idea where your mil's are going to be what your time member these are estimated numbers they're not finalized yet but they're giving you a heck of a good idea where you're going to be versus what you may have thought before you walked in the night hopefully ok i think susan this is a question to answer but maybe reared aerated can a person appear at any time after the august deadline and if so what is the process ok you can appeal every year annually by september one and then the new assessments are effective for the two thousand and seventeen tax year so again this is the palette and the counties year starts on a calendar year january one the school district is on a fiscal year so you're not going to this isn't going to apply to your tax bills that are coming out this summer that one apply in till next summer for the july one two thousand and seventeen fiscal school year and you can appeal an you found in the field they're saying i filed an appeal i'm my new assessment when may i expect a response the first thing is going to happen you're going to have a hearing and which will begin on august tenth and i hope you got notice of it the boards are i think are probably going to be making decisions fairly quickly and i haven't the expect that you would get the result from the hearing within two weeks maybe it's most statutory they have a longer time than that but i think they're going to get them out quicker than the other thing i'd say i'm suse's if you do appeal your taxes next year that doesn't relieve you from the taxes that you paid you and any of that i think of right any appeal that you would take would be perspective not retroactive i here's a question said i did not get a document that describes my property picher features a satirist how can i obtain one whoever wrote this question if you have access to the website and you go into that website you're going to see a picture of your property you're going to see sesa by you they're going to see prop parcel details you're going to see land versus buildings and so go into the website go into your property and by the way on that website it's kind of neat because if you're in as a as an address is going to bring all the addresses of people anybody on schober throughout the county so if it's washington avenue you could have three or four washington avenue but you'll see everybody in washington county lives on washington avenue and so you can pick and choose and go in and look at the details so you should be able to see the information whether you got a form or not on the website fair enough ok scott you're going to come up with that two point three six mil so the counties gone from twenty four point nine to two point three six susan can you help me with this maybe this is on commercial property and basically what they're saying is they looked at the rules and regulations and they look at the fair market value there that three approaches that was talked about and it says how and why does income get involved in the fair market value and so that's kind of a question we pull out of this is a lot of questions on here how do they why is the value important to commercial properties we have why is the income value important is that well the county did use on the income approach on some commercial properties they asked for rent rolls and other information on commercial properties they didn't always receive those but the county did bring in some qualified assessors from out of state i know they helped on a lot of the large commercial properties and a lot of those were valued on the income approach and this question is says how many times within a three year period period would be going up now i can answer that in ten different ways but i'm going to answer it this way the reassessment value is going to be put in and that's basically not changing how we do that in the future will be up to commissioners to decide as we go forward do you do it every so many years do you do when the ratio is out of bounds so there's a number of things we haven't talked really about how we would do any reassessment coming but once you put things into more consistency which is what we're trying to do and s reassessments could happen to kind of just make sure your evening out we have not decided what goes on in the future and maybe beyond my time when that will happen but we will see basically what the numbers show as we go over the next few years  yes we do have channel seven videotaping for as right now and by wednesday or thursday we're hoping it will be up on their website so you can check their local listings for channel seven we also are hoping to make this available to other libraries in the county that don't have access to channel seven so reach out to your local library because we want to make those available to you and our website the p t library dot org will have all of these links that we've talked about tonight and i also know that channel five a one c three designated organization are there any tax breaks or exemptions that's a really good question if you are a five hundred one c three and pennsylvania you are not inherently exempt from taxation only governmental buildings are inherently exempt if you're a five a one c three you have to apply for exemption and the local  county rules of assessment appeals have some rules and there are about applying for exemption and again those rules are on the county website and i also saw those rules of appeal procedures on the peters township website so you can look at those rules under the section on requests for exemption but you do need to file and just because you're a five a one c three does not mean you're exempt you have to eat under pennsylvania law certain requirements to be exempt from taxation how much does the location affect the assessed value as we've tried to say maybe we didn't say clean enough but bottom line is location location is very important and they're all state or anything else if you're in a situation where you have let's say a junkyard i'm not downing junk yards but if a junkyard is across the street from your house if there is something that's near your home that could do you value weight your home it location and community is definitely something that would affect the assessment value ok fair enough is zillow a good site to get home value i don't know i haven't used it i know it i think zillow anything you can any tool you use to give you a feeling of whether or not you think your value assessment is right for your home has some good information on it i can't swear to the accuracy but i like i say i look at everything and say gee whiz does that make sense they match up at all or they want to extreme to the other so i'd say zillow is just another tool you look at it doesn't it won't change if you go into doing a pill zillow probably won't make a difference in an appeal process fair enough you're talking about seventeen billion dollars is not going to change very much i just for that coverage with the thought what happens of the if the assessed value is reduced by forty million dollars for the county and it was less than a hundredth of a percent off i was going to be so we have a few things learn that kind of thing but i don't think it's going to substantially make much difference smaller communities it could obviously but the county i know people are leaving and that's ok if you want to stay we have more questions you're welcome to do what you want to do with that but we're just trying to get through some of these and by the way if we don't get a question answered for you tonight i would offer that if i get your telephone number name or one of the best things to use if you look at properties don't look at a property on the other side of town as much as look at the properties in your community what they've done is they what we call a neighborhood ing neighborhood says peters township might have seven eight ten different neighborhoods that they try to get the values the same goes for all sixty six communities around the county ok so you look at your house sitting somewhere else could be a lot less  or could be a lot more value based on that location where you're at i would say well you did ok i would say i would say that if you're sitting in peter's township area i looked at property values in peter's township property visor pretty high in peter's township so an acre lot pater's is going to be worth more than an acre lot in shark tears let's say or some other place so you know keep in mind that you look at several homes and this sect next question is a good one i have an issue at times because i was a home builder for fourteen years before i became commissioner and i looked at building two storey it says is there a difference between assessment for a ranch versus a two story a split level let's talk about two story in cape cod which are really two story in some way there is definitely a difference in the assessment value of a ranch which is higher than a two story home why when i build homes if i have a two thousand square foot house that that's a ranch i have to have a bigger foundation and a bigger roof to cover that two thousand square foot it's all one floor if i build two storey only cover what a thousand square foot right i only have a smaller basement i have a problem that we're about somewhere about twenty percent higher in some cases for a ranch because i have the same situation with the ranch i go for my wife and i so mine is a value a square footage wise cost per square foot more than the house i built for someone else three doors from reed two story brick colonial that basically you can see that there assessed value for the house is less this is based on a number of things it's market demand it's also the marshall tables that they use nationwide which says the cost to build a ranch is more so they have taken there's a lot of different things go into the formula that the software the tire uses on that so there is a difference i would say that a lot of us like ranches as we get older we don't want go down the steps but bottom line there's a demand for ranches there's a cost difference  that's built into the formulas for this s when values right susan i don't know says if i appeal is there also a chance my assessment could increase rather than decrease i think there is a chance it could go up if the county looks at it and they have comparable sales i don't know if there will be somebody there from the school district defending every also going to have a lawyer there to be contesting try to get taxes higher right this was i was told by an attorney that comparisons assessments are mind versus a neighbor is that a valued argument to appeal i guess what i'm saying so now where they're being why we get so neighbors is that a good reason to appeal the same and cetera etc and once higher than the other than that that's a good reason to go to appeal ok we're moving this go fast i think time to get laid if you don't have the mailing that describes your home find it on the web site fair enough everything's on the website you can print out on the right side and it gives you all the things you can look at your picture of your own to make sure it's all there if you don't have something go to the website and you can get that most current data it's in a file fair enough the ratio of increase of assessed value is directly proportionate to the decrease of the villages but say that right so and actually their real close what would be the only difference would be that we have formal bills you comes down for any entity then the millage will have to go up to adjust it i believe it's going to be minimal some people say well look at those seventy eight percent that's tradition that's trending we really on the township we did not include that in the program but it is on the library's website and they have some examples on there as well to show you but in the handouts here you'll see that the millage in peters township was estimated to go from one hundred fifty one point three mills to sixteen point four five mills so it's a significant reduction thank you susan for pointing that out in if you don't see it on if you don't remember what the website was right here on the bottom of your program today we have the libraries website and mr sylvestris forms and all of these township forms are there to help you understand a little bit more so take it with you too that's another reminder  question the assessor did not come into my house to terminate rooms as bedrooms qualify can i invite them back take a look at what we're saying the assessment values the information gathered was more for market value future if you're going to sell your home the real estate information but if i have a three versus four bedroom to us it's more valuable wisdom that if you have a four bedroom home it's more valuable to us because the resale is better if that's what you look at under the reassessment they're taking the outside dimensions of the building all right and they're basically saying this is consistent if you have a hallways you have a clause that says you have three or four bedrooms a lot of that does not take into is not taken into consideration on the assessment process there's a big difference in mass reassessment that the county has to do versus having your house appraised if you're having your house appraiser what do they do they come in do you have hardwood floors you have granite countertops what kind of bathrooms you know are you updated are you not what they have done on mass assessment on one hundred twenty thousand properties is that they look at the general characteristics of your home if their homes are real good shape it gets an extra click if your ousts is in disrepair but they're not going into your house to see what's in your kitchen and your bathrooms etc fair enough so three vs two bedrooms really is not going to an impact a lot on the value that they assessed your house under mass reassessed fair enough peo i mean you could do it but reassessment mastery assessment is different than having your house or praise by a real estate appraiser  ok i'm going to try to get this one now and we have a lot of questions we're not going to get through all these guys so we'll just decide tomorrow where you want to cut us off but i purchased my home on july first two thousand and fifteen for six hundred forty five thousand my neighbor bought this adenike a property one may months later for six hundred thirty thousand how do you tell me it is worth seven hundred thirty nine thousand well i'm going by the way this cesspit in volumes i think purchase prices can be used to try to get what the purchase price is an example i have a house my kids had they wanted to sell because they build a new home a year ago so the house was appraised at one sixty four they sold it for one thirty one it's the market demand it's what people want to pay for a house i had a lady call me i was getting the calling us happy imus and i was getting a four years ago in an area she said i paid thirty thousand more than what the cesspits tell me it's worth she said did i do wrong and i said no you did what you felt you needed it what the market demands she said what about reselling the property we've been under by waited over by way to do whatever her home in thirty five years and people still are selling their houses for what basically the market demands if he wants someone and i have been in real estate my past and if someone wants a house they want in an area they have a desire for that house they're going to pay a price that someone else might not please so again if you think this house is worth a whole lot more than what you think it's valued at you ma comparisons around you do some your own homework you file an appeal when you go in and you try to prove your case fair enough i think if you heard me i didn't say your house was worth that much more i said what you need to do if if your house is if if your house is if your house is assessed that much more than basically you should have good reason to follow an appeal to go in because sales are one of the key issues in your area to help determine the value on your property so you know this is trying to make things as equal as possible and bottom line is there are going to be things for instance a code of an area how condition on a minus b c on property condition could change the real assessment value of a property so if you think it's wrong if you have good reason to see things in your narry neighborhood that were sold for a different price then i would be going in with those sales i'd be going in with their praises of the people around you and that's the kind of information that will help you get your appeal taken care of them are i think we have a bunch of more questions but i really think i'm sorry all right if you want to stick around we're going to answer questions until you get the yes yeah i think i think we are losing people so i'm just going to say myra come up here and and finish off we have questions if you have an unanswered question you give me a name you that sounds good and wait i definitely want to thank carla and susan and scott for their evening this today to share this information a lot of great information and i know my parents i've lived in the township since one thousand nine hundred fifty eight so i'm one of those people that go way back so i appreciate learning all about what the new assessments have what they all entailed i also want to thank our library staff who helped so much through this process contacting our speakers answering phone calls and getting the word out to the public so quickly and don't forget the program will be videotaped this evening and rebroadcast later in the week and visit our website for more resources i hope you have a nice evening we have plenty of materials out on our table in the lobby pick them up we have a big pittsburgh penguin program coming on wednesday if you're interested in the history so we have some august events there too so thank you so much and like carlin said feel free to stay and answer some ask some questions personally thank you once again have a good