Did Touma Lie By Omission when telling Time Warner about tax hikes?
By Members of Stop the Reassessment Committee
Time Warner News was in the neighborhoods yesterday taking photos of stop the reassessment signs and interviewing residents.
The link to the Time Warner video is http://www.twcnews.com/nys/buffalo/ news/2016/07/26/niagara-falls-propertyreassessment-.html
A reporter interviewed Council Chairman Andrew Touma, and again, he deceived the people. He said that if an assessment increased by $10,000 that taxes would only increase $180.00 per year.
Not true, the taxes would increase $465.40 per year.
He is only telling us how much the city taxes will increase. He is leaving out how much the county and school taxes will increase.
$17.98 City Tax Rate
$ 9.14 County Tax Rate
$19.42 School Tax Rate
$46.54 Combined Tax Rate
x 10 (For $10,000)
$465.40 Total Yearly Increase
In addition, he said that NYS Law says You Should Reassess Annually.
NYS Real Property Services does not mandate that reassessments are done every year. They only recommend it. What they say is that the Level of Assessment (LOA) has to be adjusted every year, for example, the LOA
right after a reassessment would be 100%. The LOA for Niagara Falls is currently listed at 84% on our tax bills. Many cities and town don’t reassess for years, they just adjust the LOA on the tax bills. All that means is we are currently assessed at 84% of market value which is fine.
We were also told by a Councilman that the Assessor told him that it would cost $700,000 to $800,000 to hire a firm to do the reassessment, although they are telling the taxpayers it will cost $500,000. It doesn’t make sense that they would spend that money if the City wasn’t going to benefit from it. Since when have they ever been concerned about being fair to the taxpayers which is why they say they are going to reassess?
Touma is trying to spin this tax increase by saying some people are paying more than they should, and we say okay, then send those property owners a letter suggesting that they should submit an application to the Assessment Board of Review to have their taxes lowered and leave us taxpayers alone.
Thank you.
Committee to Stop the Reassessments and Continuous Tax Increases
