{"id":4224,"date":"2011-08-09T12:14:28","date_gmt":"2011-08-09T16:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=4224"},"modified":"2011-08-09T12:14:28","modified_gmt":"2011-08-09T16:14:28","slug":"unionville-board-to-consider-stronger-opposition-to-reassessments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=4224","title":{"rendered":"Unionville board to consider stronger opposition to reassessments"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cuts in tax property value have cost the school district an estimated $6.7 million in revenue over the last three years
\n<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

By Mike McGann<\/strong>, Editor, UnionvilleTimes.com<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Tax appeals are expected to cost the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District an additional $422,000 in lost revenue in the 2012-13 school year.<\/p><\/div>\n

EAST MARLBOROUGH \u2014 Homeowners hoping to get an easy path to getting their property tax values reassessed down be warned: the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District may be getting prepared to challenge you.<\/p>\n

Although the district has primarily sought to challenge tax reassessments on commercial properties, the revenue costs of reassessments \u2014 estimated to be as high as $6.7 million over the last three years \u2014 is driving district officials to go on the offensive. The Board of Education will formally consider such a move at next Monday\u2019s formal board meeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reassessments were not frequent or significant until about three years ago,\u201d said Robert Cochran, the district\u2019s Director of Business and Operations said during Monday night\u2019s Board of Education Finance Sub-committee meeting. But, with the fall in real estate values, property owners began appealing their assessments as being above market value.<\/p>\n

Those appeals, which are heard by a panel appointed by the Chester County Commissioners in Chester County or by Delaware County Council in Delaware County, have approved new property values that have cut more than $500,000 each year from Chester County and more than $130,000 per year from Delaware County. Typically, the residential cases are only opposed by the county.<\/p>\n

Although the Chester County number is estimated to drop to $422,000 in the 2012-13 tax year, it still means a roughly 1% tax increase would be needed to just to maintain the budget status quo.<\/p>\n

Cochran noted that neighboring Kennett Consolidated School District is taking a more aggressive stance, having someone with a better sense for current local property values comb through the appeals and look for cases that appear to be out of whack with current values. Cochran suggested the district look into taking a similar approach \u2014 not opposing what appear to be appeals of excessive valuations, but looking for those property owners attempting to use the system to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.<\/p>\n

Cochran noted that while such an aggressive stance would initially be more expensive \u2014 citing as an example, a theoretical cost of $1,000 additional to oppose a tax appeal, could result in keeping $200 in tax revenue per year, starting with the sixth year, the district would be ahead, financially.<\/p>\n

Although the initial sense was to look into the matter further, the calendar seemed to sway board members into putting the issue on next week\u2019s agenda, as the tax appeal season runs from the end of this month through early November.<\/p>\n

\u201cTime is of the essence,\u201d Finance chair Keith Knauss said. \u201cIf we\u2019re going to do anything about this this year, we\u2019ll need to take action.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cuts in tax property value have cost the school district an estimated $6.7 million in revenue over the last three years By Mike McGann, Editor, UnionvilleTimes.com EAST MARLBOROUGH \u2014 Homeowners hoping to get an easy path to getting their property tax values reassessed down be warned: the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District may be getting prepared […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4226,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[476,43,70,24],"class_list":["post-4224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-featured","tag-reassessment","tag-schools-2","tag-taxes","tag-unionville"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}