Reassessments … Not Fun, But Necessary

By Holly Crocco

With reassessment notices having recently been mailed out to Kent residents, Town Assessor Seth Plawsky was asked to speak at the May 19 Kent Town Board meeting to address concerns and answer questions.

“Most people seem to think if your assessment is going up, it means your taxes are going up, and that’s not the truth,” he said.

Plawsky explained that last year the town underwent a reappraisal because there were properties that were grossly over- or under-assessed. This year, the new assessments were applied by neighborhood.

For example, property owners in Lake Carmel all saw their assessments raise by about 8 percent. “That’s what we saw in the market, that’s what we did,” said Plawsky.

However, he explained that those residents aren’t going to see an assessment-driven increase in their taxes.

To calculate the tax rate, his office divides the total tax levy (the amount that needs to be collected via taxes), which this year is $10 million, by the total taxable assessed value townwide, which is $2.5 billion, to get a tax rate of $4 per $1,000 of assessed value.

For a house valued at the average of $400,000, that’s $1,600 in taxes.

“Now this year we come along and we do a trending reassessment,” said Plawsky. He said that since everyone’s home value has gone up, the number he’s dividing the levy by increases, which lowers the tax rate.

“The lower tax rate … times the new increased assessment, your taxes don’t change,” he explained. “They are the same amount. There’s a belief that the more the we raise assessments, the more the town gets to collect, (but) the budget is totally independent of assessments… As long as you’re moving with the average – what everybody else is doing – it’s net neutral on your taxes.”

Councilman Christopher Ruthven reiterated that this year’s reassessment is different than last year’s revaluation.

“This is a market raise across the board, so it doesn’t mean the town is collecting any more money,” he said. “We’re still at an amount we’re looking to collect, it’s just that the values of you properties are now assessed for more than they were before.”

Plawsky said assessments raised on average last year 68 percent, which brought the tax rate down from $42 per $1,000 of value, to $27 per $1,000 of value. However, there is more value on the home that the owner has to pay on.

“So yes, you have a higher assessment, but you have a lower tax rate,” he said. “As one goes up, the other’s going to go down.”

The assessor said that every year, homeowners will get a new assessment. And even if the market crashed and assessments were reduced, the tax rate would still stay the same.

“The vast majority of the town is in the Carmel school district,” said Plawsky. “We share that school district with five other towns. Every one of those five towns does annual reassessments. Raising and lowering, as long as everybody is going at the same rate, it’s not going to impact taxes.”

Plawsky said the people that experience a tax increase are those whose assessments were below market value, which is why a reassessment is done in the first place. Those people saw their values increase more than the 68 percent because for years they were underassessed.

“The language is difficult, but those properties were not paying their fair share,” he said. “That’s all an assessment does, really, is assign your share of the pie… The size of the pie, that’s done through budgeting, and the assessments are just to say, ‘this is what your fair share is.’ Because if you have houses that aren’t paying their fair share, it means everybody else pays a little bit more.”