Scarsdale Village Mayor and Trustees Need to Act to Meet "Fairness" Test in 2016 Revaluation

This is a letter to Scarsdale10583 from Scarsdale resident Michele Braun:
I attended the Scarsdale Village Board of Trustees meeting on Tuesday, June 14, and was appalled by the lack of consideration given to the substantive input provided by members of the Scarsdale community on the 2016 property tax revaluation performed by J.F. Ryan Associates, Inc. Mayor Jonathan Mark invited comments from the public and asked speakers to address policy and community-wide issues and not to grieve individual properties.

Many members of the community did exactly as requested: Scarsdale residents shared extensive, rigorous analyses of the revaluation model. They identified qualitative, quantitative, and governance problems with the revaluation, including, for instance that the model provided is not a good fit for the data, its results do not conform with evidence from the marketplace, it has not been validated despite the availability of widely accepted techniques, and adjusting "multipliers" were incorporated without revealing their source or rationale.

Residents asked Village leaders to correct the many problems in J. F. Ryan's work before implementing the reassessment. I heard this request from speakers disquieted by the quality of the revaluation and the governance process, whether or not they planned to challenge the revaluation of their properties.

Unfortunately, I also heard Mayor Mark dismiss Scarsdalians' requests to pause and address substantive concerns by repeating that they could file individual grievances. This response hardly met the community-wide value standard he himself had established in opening remarks. Similarly, I heard the Village Attorney, Wayne D. Esannason, opine that while this revaluation might have made some people unhappy, any changes would make other people unhappy. I can only conclude that he does not understand good analysis or logical reasoning. Neither Mayor Mark nor Mr. Esannanson addressed important community-wide or policy concerns about the J.F. Ryan revaluation or to raise the level of government and governance in Scarsdale.

I cannot assess whether J.F. Ryan met the provisions of his contract. His work, however, does not meet the "fairness of taxation" goal stated on page 6 of his June 1 report. The Scarsdale Trustees and mayor now need to meet the provisions of their social contract with the electorate: To assess the revaluation and the substantive comments from the public and decisively act to rescind the reassessment based on a flawed process and reinstate the assessments in place before this failed reevaluation.