Jamestown City Council
Jamestown City Council unanimously voted down a proposal to do a property revaluation in the City.
Council President Tony Dolce said the timing wasn’t right and there’s never really a good time to do a reval, “I think the big concern that Council had and that many residents have, we’re just now coming out of COVID, people have been struggling with inflation, the price of gas, the price of food, the price of everything has gone way up. This just would have been a very difficult time to put on top of that the possible increase in taxes.”
Dolce said Council will be looking at doing a property revaluation down the line. City Assessor Lisa Volpe had previously informed Council that if they waited beyond February to approve doing a revaluation, the cost would go from $285,000 to $685,000 due to current data being considered too old to use by New York State.
Dolce said Council will look at whether costs can be brought down by hiring temporary staff using American Rescue Plan funds to do the revaluation in-house, “That we wouldn’t be spending for GAR Associates, to put in semi-temporary employees to go out and do that work here in-house. And I know she [Lisa Volpe] mentioned that it would cost more because they would have to re-up the data, it might be better off anyways to use new data than use data that is ten and 15 years old at this point.”
The City last completed a property revaluation in 2006. The cost at that time was $1 million which was funded through moneys from New York State.
A good decision by the City Council. Many people I know are at the breaking point. Adding another possible increase in taxes would put families under water. What should happen is a DECREASE in taxes. I wonder why property taxes were not put on hold or given a percentage off since people have Been struggling for almost 2 years. That would have given real relief.