Residents Take Complaints About Reval to Scarsdale Village Hall

Mayor Steves opened the May 27 by remembering former Village Trustee Sharon Lindsay who passed away at the age of 65 last week. He called her "an amazing force who has contributed mightily to the village. He said, "She worked selflessly with dignity, patience and intelligence." He asked for a moment of silence to remember a "remarkable woman gone much too soon."

Steves reminded listeners about a community meeting with Tyler Technologies on Thursday May 29 at 7:30 where Tyler will discuss the methodology behind the recent revaluation. He said that the meeting would be televised and that those who could not attend could submit questions for Tyler to mayor@scarsdale.com.

He offered thanks to the men and women of the American Legion Post 52 who sponsored the Memorial Day Parade on Monday and called for younger residents to step up to help continue the activities of the veterans.

Public comments brought a litany of complaints against the recent tax revaluation.

Michael Levine of 54 Walworth Avenue said that he is a statistician and credentialed actuary who submitted multiple FOIL requests to the Village and used the information he received to do what became a "big study" of the methodology used by Tyler for the revaluation. He said, "I feel I understand Tyler's process and have a good sense of the issues," but doubted that "there are more than a handful of taxpayers who understand the model." He said the model was at best "goofy," in that it puts a high value on a "relatively obscure element called the grade adjustment." He claimed that the formula hurts small houses and did not account for the number of bathrooms, condition of bathrooms, the presence of air conditioning or garages. He said the comparables used to value homes "cause more distortions than they correct," and said there was a wide variance in the 400 comps used as a basis for the revaluation. He said, "the flaws are comprehensive and hit the whole village," and ended by saying, "I ask the trustees to set up a committee to review fairness and come up with a model for Scarsdale that realtors can support and taxpayers can understand." See his report and model formula here.

Hamden Vinyasa of 66 Mamaroneck Road said he was "A little surprised by the reassessment that took place." He said that he had been trying to sell his house for five years and has failed to get an offer that met the assessed value. He said that the Tyler representative who inspected his home was " impersonal and did not want to communicate with him." He said his assessment had risen 30% in the revaluation though he lives on a busy, noisy street.

William Weinstein of 3 Claremont Road said the revaluation was "out of wack" for smaller homes where the interior square footage was more highly valued than space in larger homes. He also noted that a sum of $681,755 is deducted from every valuation after the model is applied.

David Bunzel, speaking for the Heathcote Association said there are "quite a bit more than a few disgruntled homeowners." He said that the new tax roll would be submitted on May 28 and questioned the purpose of a meeting with Tyler on May 29. He said the requested data had not been provided in a "timely manner"" and that the revaluation relied on a sample size of only 366 homes, or 7% of the homes in the Village for comparables. He also claimed that seven of the variables used in the model were subjective variables, open to interpretation by the assessors, and objected to the fact that "a half acre in Edgewood is worth substantially less than half an acre in Fox Meadow."

He told trustees that the Heathcote Association had posted a petition to delay the revaluation and received "a large number of signatures from people all over the Village including 80 in Fox Meadow and the 40 in our area (the Heathcote Association), saying there is "substantial support from your constituents to defer it and get it right the first time."

Don Dietz of 66 Brewster Road said if the reval is going forward the trustees should create "a mechanism for the village to recover from those who are undervalued and bill those who are under assessed" during the transition period. He called for the trustees to "Put things back to square one."

Josh Frankel of 45 Black Birch Lane took the other view and urged the Board not to "succumb to pressure" to delay the revaluation. He defended Tyler Technologies saying that "In 2012, when RFPs were out for the reassessment, then-Mayor Flisser commented about Tyler Technologies ...  "In the last five years, Tyler has performed revaluations and assessment-related services to approximately 2,500 clients throughout the country, Canada and the U.K. This is the firm that completed the recent revaluation in neighboring Bronxville." Tyler's website claims that they have been "appraising properties for government since 1938." He continued, "Yet only in Scarsdale we are lead to believe that Tyler's methodologies are so flawed that we require a delay." He said that the number of informal meetings held by residents with Tyler met historic norms. He quoted the report from the Scarsdale Forum that said that "many large estate properties were substantially under-assessed and these property owners are enjoying a windfall on the backs of other Scarsdale taxpayers."

In other business, the Board of Trustees passed a resolution to de-map Woodland Road, a paper street that extends from Cushman Road toward Garden Road. The construction of a new subdivision there will include the demolition of two houses – one on Cushman Road and one on Woodland Road and the construction of four houses on Cushman Road by KOS builders. The Board held a hearing on May 13 and no public comments were received.

The Board of Trustees gave Richard and Loretta Rosenbaum of 16 Kensington Road a license for an encroachment onto the Village right of way for a stone walkway that did not follow the approved building plan.

They also approved $42,000 for the Sheldrake Floood Mitigation and Improvement Project, which is 10% of the total estimate cost of $416,496 to clean and remove silt in the open water course fro Cayuga Pond to Canterbury Road, install an open grating culvert, and construct a connector pipe to the open water course on the south side of Canterbury Road to balance flows.