Members of the board opted not to approve the proposal of WCA, a professional assessment company, to revalue property on the township tax rolls, something that has not been done for about 30 years. WCA had proposed a $114,520 contract to perform the reassessment of residential property during a four to five year period.
During discussion of the proposal at a study session immediately preceding the regular board meeting Feb. 25, Supervisor John Morgan said that he felt the proposal and the reassessment made “good sense” as there had been so many changes in property since it had been reassessed.
“If we don't do this, I feel we are being negligent,” he said.
Trustee Don LaPorte was not in favor of the contract and suggested that assessments should be performed by Wayne County as the township only sees a small part of the revenue generated from property taxes.
“We could look at this as spending $114,000 of taxpayers’ money to make sure the taxpayers will be paying more,” he said.
He also suggested that the township would not see enough in increased tax revenue to justify the $114,000 expense.
“Would we see enough coming back to cover $114,000?” he asked.
Trustee Matt Oddy that the township could be back in the same position in a few years without a mechanism in place to ensure that the assessments were maintained and updated.
Clerk Esther Hurst said that in her time in the township she did not recall such a reassessment of property and that while the township had purchased software to maintain property assessment records, she did not recall any updating of the data after the software program was purchased.
“Who knows what is out there we are not capturing,” she said. “We need to move into the 21st century.”
Trustee Tim Rush questioned the ability of WCA to even begin such a reassessment program in light of the current
“Weren't they supposed to start in April or May,” he asked.
Morgan and Hurst were the only two members of the board in favor of the expenditure and the proposal to approve the contract was defeated by a lack of support for a second on the motion to approve.
