Assessments

Interests & Goals

Our interests and goals are directed toward developing customer understanding of, and satisfaction with, the way the New York State Real Property Tax Law is formulated, equitably and uniformly applied, and improved.

Responsibilities

• The City Assessor makes all assessments for general tax or special assessment purposes in accordance with the provisions of the New York State Real Property Tax Law and shall perform such other functions as may be required by the City Charter or other law.
• The City Assessor maintains the assessment roll, the document that contains every property assessment. To do this, the physical description, or inventory, and value estimate of every parcel of real property in the municipality is kept up to date. The property inventory is available for inspection by appointment before the filing of the tentative assessment roll.
• Assessors are interested only in fairly assessing property in their assessing unit. If an assessment is correct and the tax bill still seems too high, the assessor cannot change that. Complaints to the assessor must be about how property is assessed.
• It is up to individual property owners to monitor their own assessments. Taxpayers who feel they are not being fairly assessed should meet with their assessor before the tentative assessment roll is established.
  • Taxpayers unhappy with growing property tax bills should not be concerned only with assessments. They should also examine the scope of budgets and expenditures of the taxing jurisdictions and address those issues in appropriate and available public forums.