Feb 11, 2016 3 min read

McMURRAY – More than 200 Peters Township residents learned at a public meeting Wednesday they will begin finding out the new values of their properties next month, but they still won’t know if their property taxes are going up until next year.

The meeting was the 10th public forum held by Washington County officials to explain the ongoing reassessment process, the county’s first in 34 years.

“We recognize there are value inequities on the tax rolls,” said Bradley Boni, the county’s chief assessor, at the meeting held in the auditorium of Peters Township Middle School.

Preliminary property values will be sent out in staggered batches beginning in March, Boni said. Informal reviews of the preliminary values will be held through June, he said. Owners have until Aug. 10 to file an appeal and all appeals will be heard by Oct. 31.

“Peters is a growing and continuing stabilizing environment,” he said. “Peters is top tier.”

New property values for the county and the municipalities go into effect Jan. 1, 2017. Because school districts follow the state’s fiscal year, which ends June 30, their new property assessment will not go into effect until July 1, 2017.

The ongoing reassessment of the county’s 120,000 property parcels, 80,000 of which are residential, is the result of a lawsuit filed by the McGuffey and Washington school districts in 2008.

The two school boards claimed many properties, particularly commercial and industrial properties, were underassessed and not paying enough in taxes.

Exactly how Peters property owners will be affected by the reassessment won’t be known until the county, the township and school district figure out if taxes need to be adjusted, Boni said.

And even then, he said, that does not mean taxes will increase.

“You have to avoid comparing the old value to the new value,” Boni told his audience. “You have to ask yourself when you get the new value if this is the price you would sell for.”

Millage rates for both the county and the municipalities will be certified by Nov. 15, Boni said.

“We don’t want to overshoot or undershoot values,” he said.

The county gave Tyler Technologies Inc. a $6.96 million contract in 2013 to conduct the countywide reassessment. Since then, Tyler – which did the Allegheny County reassessment several years ago – has knocked on doors, talked to owners, examined real estate sales and measured building exteriors in order to compile an accurate review of properties.

“We feel we did in excellent job in Allegheny County with the information we had,” said Wesley Graham, Tyler Technolgies’s project supervisor for the Washington County reassessment, “But, we did not knock on every door in Allegheny Coiunty.”

Boni said the county is also in the process of revamping its website so residents will be able to find out the value of their homes, and be able to compare that with adjacent properties.