Assessments On Hold After Severing Ties With Watch

NORTH EAST — After four years of doing business with the consultant, the town of North East has terminated its contract with John Watch and his firm, MJW Consultants.

Councilman Dan Briggs made the motion during a Town Board meeting last Thursday night. The board gave its unanimous support.

"The Town Board was not desirous of moving forward with MJW’s services, and I felt it was appropriate that the board came to a final conclusion at this time on the record," Town Supervisor Dave Sherman said.

That means that there will be no annual update process for the 2007 tax roll, as it would have been planned or contemplated if MJW Consultants had continued its services.

The Town Board decided to discontinue its relationship with Watch for several reasons first raised by the North East Tax Revolt Alliance (NETRA) after the 2004 revaluation and subsequent annual updates were distributed throughout the town. There was a disdain for Watch’s neighborhood methodology and a base disagreement with the practice of yearly reassessments. NETRA also charged that Watch’s work resulted in inequities among property values throughout the town.

Because the fate of Watch and his consulting firm has been uncertain for some time now, he had done no work on behalf of the town for a number of months.

Now the town must figure out how to get its properties up to 100 percent valuation without Watch, which is where consultant Robert Strell enters.

Strell was hired by the town to review Watch’s work, which he deemed adequate — with some parts needing immediate attention and other parts needing little repair. Strell recommended the town do a revaluation as soon as possible to remedy the problems Watch left behind, like data collection cards that offered no real history of the properties, etc. There was even one property in the village that was left off the tax roll altogether. Strell said if the mistakes were not addressed they would continue to compound and make matters worse. According to town officials, including Sherman and Assessor Jon Barrett, a revaluation could not be done this year, as it’s too late to start on the data collection process.

For now the assessor’s office will continue with its work as it has in years past, with a basic level of maintenance that allows for simple adjustments, like new additions to a home. The work will be done with an eye toward an update in 2008.

"We would not be able to revise a whole new roll in 2007. We would not be able to marshal the forces necessary to accomplish this by bringing in another outside service into the assessor’s office for that process," Sherman said. "I think we’ve been talking about trying to look forward to doing something for 2008, but for that to happen the work would have to begin this year."

There’s a catch, however. Jon Barrett’s term is up Dec. 31, 2007. He told the board last week that he will not look to continue as assessor. That means either the town will have to elect a new assessor (as is the current procedure), or the board will have to appoint an assessor. The board has yet to come to decide.

"It is a complication with a new face being involved," Briggs acknowledged, adding that the town should get a job description together before Barrett’s term expires.

Sherman agreed that a changing of the guards will put a kink in the works.

"You’re going to have a change of personnel here at sometime and I don’t know if we wait until January if they’re going to be able to pick up the ball and run with it," he said. "Whoever comes into that job will definitely have to have some ability and understanding of what they’re doing."

There might also be a need to bring in more staff to help with data collection in the field, and data processing in the office, according to the board.

"Part of doing this will be discerning what kind of resources will be available to the town of North East as far as outside resources and internal resources," he said.

For now the board will continue to review Strell’s recommendations and try to come to some kind of resolution about the assessor’s position. The town is also seeking outstanding deliverable products from the update that Barrett wanted to have that the town believes are of some value that Watch has yet to deliver. The town’s attorney is looking into the matter.