The city has completed its first comprehensive real estate reappraisal since 1988, and the assessor's phone line is perpetually busy with homeowners asking questions, said City Manager A. Ray Griffin Jr. On Tuesday, Griffin gave members of City Council a chart displaying the impact of the 1996 reassessment on selected residential properties. In other words, a homeowner's assessed value increase will not necessarily reflect a rise in taxes of the same amount.
State law requires all cities to conduct periodic reassessments of real estate.
The assessment cycle for Danville is every two years. Typically, assessed property values are one to two years behind the fair market value, the city manager said. The commonwealth's attorney looking into possible conflicts of interest in Pittsylvania County said Thursday it will take some time to determine the scope of the probe. Don Caldwell, commonwealth's attorney in the city of Roanoke, said it will take a month to 45 days to get an initial feel for whether the investigation can be done quickly or will be more extensive. Caldwell said a major conflict problem or nothing at all will jump out quickly.