Delay the Revaluation?

This letter was sent to Scarsdale10583 by Donald Dietz III of Brewster Road: Contrary to the Scarsdale Inquirer's commentary on last week's Village Board meeting, I thought the Heathcote homeowners who spoke did understand the revaluation process very well. They presented legitimate arguments, asked reasonable questions and made sensible suggestions as to how the Village might move forward in order to improve the revaluation and make everyone more comfortable with Tyler Technologies' methodology.

In contrast, I found many of the Village's responses to be less than forthcoming and, in some instances, even deflecting and dismissive, as if the revaluation were already a fait accompli. Not a confidence builder in my book.

As I see it, there are two key issues the trustees ought to tackle and resolve before Tyler's preliminary assessments are adopted by the Village Assessor and set in stone. The first is the accuracy and, therefore, the reliability and legitimacy of the Tyler revaluation. The second has to do with transparency and trust, and correcting the perception around town that something is just not right, that the Tyler revaluation is not any more equitable or fair than what we have now.

As to the first, it is clear that what Tyler has wrought is not right and can be legitimately questioned. At a minimum, 927 homeowners scattered throughout the Village (me included), not just in Heathcote, say this is so, and it is no secret that there are others out there who were unable to contact Tyler during the Village's abbreviated review period. Collectively, these good citizens own at least 16% of the revalued properties in the Village, if not more, which is not insubstantial. They certainly should not be marginalized by anyone, including the Inquirer, as merely a few inevitably disgruntled citizens.

In addition, by the Village's own admission (to wit the Mayor, the Village Manager and the Village Assessor), there are many mistakes in Tyler's work. This includes an indeterminate number of properties undervalued by Tyler, whose owners are inexplicably silent at this time. But we have been told not to worry, since it will take the Village only three years or so to find and fix these errors. Wow! Since when is anything in this community other than excellence acceptable? A valuation error rate possibly approaching 35-40% to start does not seem to meet that standard.

Perhaps the more difficult problem to resolve is that of trust, without which any revaluation will come under constant scrutiny and criticism and even potential legal challenge. Is this really what the Mayor and Trustees want as their legacy?

Why not embrace the appeal made by the Heathcote constituency last week and defer the revaluation for a year so that there is adequate time to correct obvious errors, share information and hear everyone out without their having to file formal grievances at potentially significant cost, as they are being told by the Village to do now? Why not make every effort to demonstrate that the revaluation is in fact not only equitable and fair, but accurate and a marked improvement over the system in place today? That would be a proper outcome and a logical way to proceed.

Alternatively, if for some as yet unknown reason there is insufficient time (or lack of political will) to delay implementation, the Village ought to put in place a mechanism to ensure that those who have been wronged or improperly benefitted are, respectively, made whole or incrementally assessed by the Village at some future date. The idea would be to restore taxpayers to the position they would have been in had the revaluation not been instituted prematurely, but instead had been done correctly the first time. In this way, balance, credibility and equity could be reestablished after the fact.

Respectfully submitted,

Donald E. Dietz III
66 Brewster Road, Fox Meadow