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Platz said several other Westchester County towns and municipalities are interested in doing “consortium” revaluation. Depending on what towns decide to proceed, it’s possible the companies would offer a group discount, he said.
“As things stand now, we’ve met a few times over the last couple of months,” Platz said of the meetings with other towns. “They found four companies that are interested and now they’re going to request those four companies submit bids.”
The process is moving forward aggressively, he said.
“They’re trying to get a harder and faster idea of which towns are really ready to go forward, and they were going to request that those proposals be handed in by October of this year,” he said.
If that timeline is met, that set of revaluations would happen in October 2014.
The more parcels of lands that are revalued, the lower the price would be per parcel, Platz said. He estimated the revalues would cost “anywhere from $100 to $150 per parcel,” depending on which towns are involved and whether the town opts for an exterior revaluation only or chooses to include interiors as well.
The cost of revaluation could be $750,000 to $1.11 million, including the cost of hiring a monitor to oversee the process, Platz said.
“From what we saw at the last meeting, Ossining, Greenburgh and Yonkers are on board and looking to move forward very quickly,” said Platz. That is based on discussions with the town’s assessors; no town boards have yet to approve the plan.
According to Platz, the assessor of Ossining has indicated it would like to go first.
“If that’s the case, the company would probably want us to go along with them because of our geographical location to Ossining,” he said.
If Ossining were the first town to conduct a revaluation and New Castle chose to join it, the process could start as early as October 2014. However, the Town Board said it is only ready to put the town down as “interested,” and is not yet ready to fully commit until more details are known.
If the town chooses to move forward, Platz said the general rule for revaluations is a third of the town’s property increases, a third decreases and a third stays the same. All town parcels must be examined.
New Castle has not done a townwide revaluation since 1978.
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