Sep 11, 2005 By Amy Karpinsky 6 min read

If Fayette County Chief Assessor James A. Hercik has his way, the Fayette County commissioners will begin budgeting next year for another countywide reassessment project, fulfilling an option touted when the current system was put in place. Ideally, Hercik said he would like to have the county on a five-year update cycle as a way to maintain the most accurate assessment system possible. Waiting much longer than that allows market values to stray from assessed values, leading to consistency problems.

“We have to have a constant review and a constant update, and we should be updating every so many years to keep the system fair and equitable,” Hercik said. “We should do an update at least every five years. That’s a good gauge.”

Hercik said the updating is necessary because of the changing climate of real estate values. “Neighborhoods change, new construction pops up, the economy changes,” Hercik said. He added that people can change thoughts on where they want to live or shop all and it all affects market values.

Hercik said unlike the $3 million reassessment that took effect on Jan. 1, 2003, when Cole Layer Trumble of Ohio did a “scratch project” in which they started with a blank piece of paper, this time it will be a lot easier and cheaper. When the reassessment was done of the county’s 80,000 parcels, it was the first in the county since 1958 and it corrected a host of inequities.

“It’s like building a house. We have the foundation and now all we have to do is customize it,” Hercik said.

While he said he did not have any definite figures, Hercik said the cost would “definitely be less than $1 million.” He said it would mostly be done in-house, although there would be a “hand-holding contract with CLT” for some of the work.

In neighboring Greene County, which has 30,000 parcels, reassessments were done in 1992-93 and 2002-03. Greene County Chief Clerk Gene Lee said Greene County did it in house using some very sophisticated software the last time around. He said the initial reassessment in 1992-93 cost about $1 million, but the most recent one cost significantly less. Lee said he believes a reassessment should be done every 10 years. “The longer you wait, the harder it is to do a reassessment,” Lee said.

Hercik said for Fayette County, another reassessment would not be as labor intensive, although the county’s seven assessors would have to look at every property in the county and talk to property owners to determine if any changes have been made to the property, such as additions or porches.

As a part of the reassessment, the county will also be refining neighborhoods, some of which encompass an entire township. Hercik said CLT made some of the neighborhoods larger because of the limited number of comparable sales, but he said what ended up happening was that houses that are really not comparable ended up being compared. He said, as an example, that a house in a small patch community of German Township ended up being compared to a house along Route 21, although the areas are very different.

Hercik said he believes that the county officials recognize that updates need to be done so the assessment system doesn’t “get out of whack again.” He said Fayette County went from “a very bad system to a very good system.” Specifically, in terms of accurate assessments, he said the county went from being ranked 66 out of 67 counties to second in the state after the 2003 system was implemented. He said the goal of the assessment office is that property owners pay “their fair share – no more, no less.”

Hercik said he is currently working to put a proposal together to give to the commissioners. “We’ve had no firm decision on anything. We’re in the talking phase, obviously,” he said.

The proposal will include how long it’s going to take, what it’s going to cost, who’s going to do it and how it’s going to be done. Hercik said he will work toward securing funding when the county has budget hearings later this year for the 2006 budget. He said if the commissioners approve the project, the funding would likely have to be spread out over a couple years. Hercik said the major costs of the project are fixed costs for things such as postage, which is required to notify all property owners of their new values.

Hercik said depending on how soon the project gets underway, the new values could be implemented on either Jan. 1, 2008 or Jan. 1, 2009.

Commission Chairwoman Angela M. Zimmerlink, who has monthly meetings with department heads, said she had preliminary discussions with Hercik beginning in February on the issue, and he gave an initial figure of $665,000, for a reassessment, with CLT doing the work. She added that Hercik said the figure would probably end up being a lot less than that after negotiations.

Zimmerlink said in discussions with Hercik two or three months ago, she agreed that a reassessment needs to be done every so often to keep the system as fair as possible.

Although she said she said has not received any definite numbers to date, Zimmerlink said she would like to start budgeting to pay for the project. Zimmerlink said by looking to the future, Hercik was doing “smart planning.”

Zimmerlink said although there are still a few glitches in the system, she believes the county tax assessment office has “more accurate property information, an improved computer system and a staff trained by CLT, so only if these resources are used properly combined with CLT can this reassessment be accomplished in a timely and cost efficient manner.”

Zimmerlink said she agrees with Hercik’s suggestion to consider earmarking funds now. “The result of another reassessment should be to correct property value inequities, correct in-house errors on property information and lessen the number of yearly tax assessment appeals,” Zimmerlink said. “Last year the commissioners heard appeals and quite a few were to simply correct tax record information, while others disputed their assessed values.”

Zimmerlink said at this point, she is waiting to get a concrete cost proposal from Hercik before anything can be done.

Commissioner Vincent A. Vicites, the only current commissioner who was in office when the 2003 reassessment was implemented, said when the commissioners underwent the reassessment there were never were any long-term discussions about future reassessment projects. “I was just focused at the time on getting it updated,” he said, adding that any future reassessment project would have to be planned and talked about.

“There was a lot of thought and planning and due diligence with the initial reassessment, and the same thing needs to be done with something like this,” Vicites added. “We have not discussed it as a board of commissioners. I think that’s what we need to do.”

Commissioner Joseph A. Hardy III is out of town and unavailable for comment. Charmaine Sampson, Hardy’s administrative assistant, said she could not comment because a proposal has not yet been made.