overwhelmingly the best turnout and i got to be honest with you that's not surprising we expected great turnout here it's a very active community and i community that wants to know about this project so i commend you for being here requires that i am the keeper of a would be assessment records for washington county now that's about one hundred twenty thousand parcels worth of records i certainly don't do that by myself and i have to say i may not have ever seen your record individual a so i  may not know anything about your property but people come to me to get questions answered if they want to know their building footprint to assess value information they're anticipating property taxes  what the characteristic date is for their neighborhood looking to file an assessment appeal they have a problem they need to get in songs to try to help people as best i can that's my way with the county when we click and we have robert here this evening here is the former county chief assessor the current washington county reassessment supervisor bob is in this field for longer than i've been alive he's been in this field for forty years and to show your age but he's not yet he's been in the field for quite some time bob was gracious enough to stay on for this project i think without bob it would be extremely difficult to try to carry on my day to day tasks and assist with the reassessment project as well and if it weren't for bob and his wealth of knowledge of his willingness to stay i think the project would be and in a different position that it is now so thank you bob one more quick there and we have the rest graham the senior project supervisor for tyler technologies i westray him has thirty three years of  experience in the appraisal and assessment field he is a licensed general appraiser in pennsylvania and i'm sure another state or two and he is certainly a wealth of knowledge as well so you have experience people working on the project for sure so we have some objectives today these objectives have not changed since we did our first presentation and school districts ago really were looking to provide taxpayers with a transparent overview of this project you may have heard stories about reassessments what they mean what they don't mean what you think they mean and we realize that this is a publicly funded project on the taxpayer in washington county too just like i'm imagining most of you folks or so you deserve to have your questions answered if you have any and recognize that this is a this is an open book this is your project as much as it is or as you have the right to access the data and have your questions answered so we want to tell you where this project came from where it's been where it's going and what two thousand and sixteen is going to look like because it's a rather busy year here in two thousand and sixteen and of course i think i touched on it already but we want to address your questions and concerns and some nights a good forum to do that so really just a quick word on the genesis of this project the words ins of this project this began in two thousand and eight it was initiated by two school districts they really requested that they c get under contract and reevaluating all of its property values it's been well documented in our local press now from my vantage point from bob's managed point of people that have access to our tax roll data on a day to day basis we do recognize that there are value inequities in disparities on our tax roll and what i mean by that is there is a tendency over time between reassessments and reevaluat one property to pay more than their fair share of taxes and another to pay last i why the market really is dictating that their properties may be worth about the same thing it does happen it happens in this community as well as any other community in washington county so we're trying to do is decipher where the shifting market conditions take place how do we assign accurate property values that make sense to property owners so that tax shares are equalized th really going to end up paying more or less than their fair share for a property taxes for the move to the next slide and i just want to build this one out there's quite a few build outs on this one so we talk about stages of neighborhood life all the time in our business we talk about areas that are growing stabilizing declining and revitalize and now here's township without a doubt is a growing and continually stabilizing environment we know that you folks know that so much so that i'm hard pressed to think of areas that are in decline and for that matter if they're in decline i think that local officials and neighboring property owners find a way very quickly to renew that to ensure that that doesn't affect their property values and that's a testament to the time and effort that you put in here in your communities it's a very well planned community so what we're trying to do is target those areas of growth and stability in order to assign good values sound values equitable values again so that no one's paying more or less than their fair share of property taxes just a word on the project status because really what you've probably seen i guess i can discuss this of course as well tyler technologies the chosen reassessment vendor here in washington county certainly has a presence across pennsylvania different pockets of pennsylvania to be sure these are not areas that they're all currently reassessing in simultaneous with washington county these are areas that they have worked in historically some that they're continuing to work in they also have a large computer assisted mass appraisal software it's also something that washington county has purchased as a part of this project certainly will enable us to do a better job maintaining equity and fairness on our tax will and so some of these other counties are also software clients as well as reassessment clients we can move on so back to the project status if you want to build this out a little bit down to the end these are some of the more of our items that you may remember from the past two years close interaction with property owners door to door data collection now we have one hundred twenty thousand parcels in washington county about eighty thousand of them are improved with a residence or commercial building so all eighty thousand of those improved properties were physically door to door data collected on anybody remember knock on the door of your home what are your property characteristics an attribute bedroom count bathroom down anybody remember that as you've probably seen i know it says return within thirty days it's pretty rigid i will take it whenever we can get it and the subsequent follow up to that data collection and that data entry with something called a data verification that when i move back so you folks can see a little bit better anyway remember the data mailers pictures sketch it's good so for the folks who didn't get them we have the sign in sheets here across the front of the stage before the end of the evening but your contact information now name address phone number you'll be contacted by tyler technologies representative to ensure that you do get one have an opportunity to analyze that  and we can build this out as well you just might want to build all of them out as we go so what do we do with all of that data that data really doesn't tell a story until we analyze it and that's where the real ballots team are the real assessment team tyler technologies a staff appraisers an experienced mass appraisers begin to establish multiple approaches to value of course residentially really want to look at sales comparison approach some people are probably familiar with that we might have some real estate personnel in the audience tonight so this comparison is probably ideal especially on residential property the market tends to tell a story so that helps us a lot obviously we have a lot of good sales data in mcnairy i think any mass appraiser would tell you they always want more sales you always want more or less but this is a great area as far as market data is concerned there's pockets of the county where we have a very very few sales five percent of sales three percent of sales here we have an inflated number of sales compared to the rest of the county so that bodes well for market analysis if those other areas as i discussed if we don't have good sales we rely heavily on cost we may not need to do that here when i talk about cost i'm talking about cost approach value you still make a good lay in pricing but we're talking about a replacement cost subtracting off depreciation i really don't think you're going to find the necessity for a lot of cost approaches to value here when you have a good number of sales and of course on income producing properties commercial properties retail mixed use office space you want to try to capitalize income streams what is the worth of that income stream and does it have a relevance to property value any commercial property owners in the on ok so you understand that you and we do value of you i say way but tyler technologies has been doing a substantial amount of value review we've kind of been in the background assisting them as as best we can with neighborhood data questions they need answered about a certain economic area and what they're really doing is using technology to build manage instead of revisiting the field after all of that data collection they're using everywhere photography with the imagery they call it there's been a screen approach i don't think it's a very creative name it's three screens it doesn't do a lot for me but they're comparing sketches they're looking for outliers anything that may seem odd about property values and they're looking at these these items these photos these sketches these property tax ma to ensure that they've gotten their data correct so no word on our timeline here again still talking about project status now we started the school district presentations in november so it was a new item then starting to get old now as value review is been going on now for the better part of sort of months in conjunction with meeting with property owners and school district officials and talking about what's going to come here in two thousand and sixteen so you see in march we have a  ge scale a notice of new value and we're going to talk a little bit more about that as we go on that's going to be a preliminary tentative property value that folks are going to receive in the mail sometime in march they're going to go in staggered batches they're not a tax bill your taxes aren't any part of this discussion tonight it's an unknown it would be irresponsible of me to speculate on property tax liabilities i'm not a tax guy i'm an assessor so what we want you folks to warm up to or start to wrap your head around on these notices of new value is just that is this an accurate value on my property now we're going to build that out again on a later slide but for now we're going to continue to talk about the rest of the year we're going to have informal reviews on those property values if you have any concerns about them or you want to understand how they've been established what research and what analysis went into establishing those property values that's going to run through june june first i believe west will be once all of the informal reviews are finalized so we have a nice timeframe there to meet individuals with property owners we can do something over the phone if necessary have a discussion about those preliminary numbers and then of course later in the year we talk about form of appeals we can touch on that later as well but really i want you to focus on his march through june notices a new value in march from the reviews through june first so we'll talk about it a little bit more as we go so this is a short two minute video if you want ok so we can advance to the next slide now just out of curiosity it is a two minute video you don't have to i want you to tell me if honestly did anybody expect that their taxes would rehash the two minute video there we want to forget your old values and your new values they bear no resemblance to one another your current assessment isn't one nine hundred eighty one base your value it's fractionalized a twenty five percent that doesn't even sound meaningful i'm sure to anybody in the room you knew values are going to be based on current market trends and patterns so those should make sense to you so you want to ask again is this something i could reasonably expect to sell this real estate for and again if the answer is yes that's good the answer is no he simply set up an appointment and we can talk on the phone we can meet in person and you can build the sound if you want just to touch quickly i know a lot of people are very busy these are these are working people a lot of you are working people you have jobs you don't have time to always come in from appointments so the county is in the process of building out a public access website for you available twenty four seven of course just like most things on the web  with access to all property data across the county so you can check on your neighbors you can check on the people that you know have similar in real estate to yours to see what their value looks like to see if you're in line with one another and i think most of the folks in the room probably have a pretty good idea what their properties are worth and i think they also have a pretty good idea what some of the people that they're that their friends and neighbors are with what their property may be worth so this is your data you have access to a twenty four hours a day i a public access site it will be listed on your notice of new value in march it will be a build out of the county website some of you have probably already visited our county website it's going to link you to there and there's going to be a public access search for ya and just quickly in closing i mean this is the time that we build in so we're question and answer of course we appreciate the participation in the turnout is tremendous as i said i expected it we expected it it's what we hoped for believe it or not i won't name the school district names but the last school district that we visited wes affectionately likes to say we can't lose school board the school board council's turnout and say well yes it doesn't count because they had to be there it was part of their school board meeting for you if it's a question about time or technologies and their methods or things that they consider west will certainly help us out and if if need be i'd certainly walk to people to have your questions asked so you can save them into the microphone i don't want to mess up the rephrase the question that i think the hope is that if you have a question you know you do it in the microphone here because i think this is going to be this is being recorded this will be broadcast at a later date so i don't think the t v camera will pick up on that so the question was and it's normally a question that gets asked some of the first question i guess asked if at every school district is what happens to the tax rates to the tax rates get adjusted and how much they get adjusted and dancers yes they do get adjusted there a windfall provisions built into the pennsylvania statutes pertaining to reassessments so taxing authorities counties municipalities school districts cannot reap a windfall as a result of this project they can ask for additional revenues counties municipalities can ask for ten percent additional revenues i know our county county solicitor's here is firmly committed to not raising their taxes as a result of this project they feel very strongly about that and i certainly won't speak for municipal officials will be their call school districts on the other hand they or hamstrung by act one indices so they i've never seen an act one index and listening carefully anywhere near ten percent normally it in the range of two and a half to three percent three and a half percent what we speculate from a county perspective is that you could see a millage adjustment from twenty four point nine mills some people might be familiar with that to something between three and four mills so it don't take a new property value and multiply it by you would know words that will give you some sticker shock i get i could see that but your question is relevant tax rates to get adjusted county municipalities can ask for up to ten percent additional revenues school districts whatever their act one index that's what they're bound by yes new slightly different the expectation in washington county's part is that there will be no additional revenues collected local municipalities may if they so chose if they so choose address those concerns with their with their residence a place where there's good reason to raise taxes you folks will have to be aware of it and i guess for school districts as well evening and you're informed you're hearing asking good questions yet nobody's going to be able to get one over on you it is known as you continue to participate be involved in your township school district or county meetings it will be done transparent really there or there will be sales data available yes so that was certainly a system in your in your efforts to ensure accurate property values for sure the same sales we have access to at the county so just from the folks in the room that are asking questions that i'm going to do my best to continue to repeat them this gentleman had asked about sales data historic sales data would be available for you to see pertaining to your property and other property answers yes i think it would be helpful question wise if we use the mikes everybody could hear it's good that's good  twenty five years with would be a bad time trying to look at the last touch on the analysis that they did they certainly got data from the county office and again for folks who need some clarification of the question in case you couldn't hear it was what sales data are we looking out how many years worth of sales what type of analysis every done to be looked at five years twenty five years i'll let mr graham clarify what years were involved in the analysis   july first two thousand and fifty and that will be our sell day that's the value that we will place on the property as of that date which is july first two thousand  opportunities if you search them by parse the idea that we don't have the g i s capabilities building to look at things within a radius quite yet i think the typical data that people are looking for the relevant attribute data the same things you're probably already thinking square foot living here construction quality affective age of course you can search by address property owner name but if you could in a subdivision plan your course would be numbers are pretty similar they normally repeat exact same until you get to the last series of digits that are in your actual parcel number so be very easy to just query up a batch of subdivided parcels and look at them as a group but the idea of being able to look at something with g i s pins is a good one i just don't know were able to do that different tax bill on the basis of these values is two thousand and seventeen so your county and municipal bills for two thousand and seventeen will be based on these new values your school district bill will not look any different till july one twenty seventeen so the question of the general good question the question that the gentleman asked was i mean how do you do this mass appraisal when you really don't know all of the relevant data about the interior contents because we know those interior upgrades and those fitting finishes really do make a conditions that we don't know about that's where we would expect property owners to interact with us if they see if they feel their values to it may be because their underlying conditions that we're not aware of really dramatic interior upgrades that need to be done are correct but i think i answer that for the best of my abilities in a mass appraisal were looking at broad factors but individually as a property owner of you know about items that could be affecting that value that's where we encourage you to meet with us you mentioned that i'll be able to see what my neighbors are also a stuff stuff correct so will i be able to use the value to us test my neighbor to fight my assessed value potentially if it's relevant the actual assessed value sure so i'll be able to say my neighbor has an equivalent home and it's assessed differently than mine sure ok so like anything else i want to get to the point and so we didn't talk about thank you for speaking of the mike by the way we didn't talk about the film appeals we talked about inform the reviews things that you would bring to tyler's attention one on one once you get to reform the appeal when you can certainly bring that to your attention early on but if you if you don't if you file a formal assessment of people really at that point what you're going to do is bring your evidence which you're probably going to think or relevant comparable properties your neighbor they're under assessed compared to you you know about conditions within their home i don't know that the market will tell the difference i don't know if the construction quality will tell the difference unless you're not a good contractor i think if they're in the identical home and they're very similar there may be some obvious factor that makes one better than the other but i think that's going to be hard to determine in a mass appraisal unless you would have an individual one on one with a tiler employee or accounting official to indicate to us that there's something really different about your house because you build it yourself i don't know if that's going to pick up on  would be really interested in some of the responses  on the phone and if that issue isn't abundantly clear to someone on the phone then i think you're probably going to want to schedule an appointment a face to face interview yes or in the back  value change based on other people's better people that may include your property and that appeal to very good question i think it's possible i think it's possible and to the extent that it would become clear that something about the initial analysis was incorrect about a certain area maybe your properties in that area and maybe it's become clear by virtue of of an abundance of informal reviews that we really missed the mark so really to answer the question it's possible that you were march value may look different in july when you get your change of assessment notice and to rise above mindful of that out then would the timeline be adjusted then for anything  ok so then we may get a value completely different from march enjoy riding and then there's the timeline start over again what's i mean it is seems like yes it does and talked over the thirty first ok so then you only have just a couple more months then to go through that word justification in there is you living in an area that's growing and the bad these are going up but we also look at the age of your house compared to some of the houses that have been built after will be set after we certify values on november fifteenth so it's going to be difficult for you to really start estimating property taxes in the meantime i'd encourage him not to do so the way i think is most about you know could his value change after march if we find out through other appears that something is wrong in this this gentleman's concern is hearsay so i guess you're thinking one neighbor work on the lord batches properties were not time but individual factors hearsay factors we're talking about something that might become apparent as a result of informal reviews that point us to an area where we realize that we may have missed the mark on a large batch of property so i would concern myself with the hearsay stuff either and i believe it or not as an assessment officer that we hear a lot of hearsay from neighboring property owners over time now a but i would suggest that something like that is most likely not going to be picked up on as as easily as it would be if you had if you bring a toy attention if you think that is potentially a detriment and i think that's a discussion is and so i would suggest it's kind of hard for me to say that there's a god but if there's an individual question that i can help you with there's any help that we could render in assisting you search i'd be happy to do so sometimes it's not really a is the casino there were supposed to be other tax relief and that never seemed to happen is that going to be factored in or isn't  money did the money not come up to what they were hoping or i was i was just wondering if you could answer i don't know that i can and it never seemed to have materialized did it but that's my best worst it's just so my question is i ground how peter's township links relative to the other cities or towns in washington county w you say that peter's township ranks number one in the growth market growth as well as the highest selling price right now in the county and where does the corrective question you talked about the appreciable growth even over the course of the past five years i don't think that's any secret that this is an extremely fast growing and continually stabilizing area we know that i think everybody in the room knows that  never formally ranked anything but i would say it's certainly top tier but we're talking about this on the way in today because this is obviously a little bit of a different environment you're talking about an area of sustained growth and continue development i had an assessment appeal hearing on my desk for review today and we would we would contrast saying this person's current assessment and their current sale price with one of their comparable that also happens to be married i'm not going to share addresses or names i don't intend to do that but these two property owners paid within five thousand dollars of one another as far as current market prices guy within five thousand dollars but their current assessments were half of one another so that means a person in this community who is shopping around at the same marc price says a neighbor maybe not an immediate neighbor within the same district is paying half of the property taxes of that other person it happens in this community too so i think the idea is that we don't overshoot the mark we don't undershoot the more but we look for relative equity so that nobody's really overpaying nobody's underpaying everybody's paying their fair share my best response yes are thank you am i correct in assuming that tyler did the allegheny county reassessed absolutely correct with that fiasco that confidence can we have that we're going to get a fair shake i think there are still comment on the allegheny county experience because it wasn't close to it and i don't know the assessment official in allegheny county i don't know the facts that went into that west comment on the experience because i think he's pretty knowledgeable of it but i  together we've taken the time to come to these meetings so that we can answer your questions i don't know that we could work harder than we're working but i do expect there will be areas that need corrected i don't expect them to be a great just but i do think that there will be information that needs corrected i do maybe not to that extent i'll concentrate extent that's my expectation route living here right i don't have any knowledge of that but i'm just going on the review process but to car which we did a good strong job with the information we had one of the things that we didn't do and allegheny county was knock on every door that wasn't in the plan it wasn't in the contract th t the judge the county judge accepted that they didn't have to go knock on every door measure every house where we did that here so there are some differences in allegheny county th between allegheny county and washington i can say is don't believe anything you hear and only half what you read so you know we feel that we did a good job with the information that we had and allegheny county well schedule to be until eight o'clock we have one more minute i'll give you folks the last question so so again i'm touched on a lot of things i'm sorry if i glossed over it quickly it will be on your data verification mailer suits me you notice a new value that you get in march it will actually be this link  reassessment and there will be a link there for the public access site we've actually just kind of finalized that this week i haven't been able to say that in nine other school districts but i can say that here so again  names addresses phone numbers questions concerns address them here really appreciate the turnout the participation it's been great thank you