Jul 7, 2016 3 min read

For the second time this year, phones were ringing because of the Washington County property reassessment.

“The phone bank was extremely busy on Tuesday and Wednesday, and while it’s still busy today, it’s subsided some,” Chief Assessor Bradley Boni wrote in response Thursday to an email request for information about the county’s first reassessment in 35 years.

The county mailed final assessments July 1. Residents may have received them Saturday, when county offices were closed, or Tuesday.

If property owners want to appeal their final assessments, they need to either pick up a form at the tax assessment office, Suite 205, Courthouse Square, 100 West Beau St., Washington, call 724-228-5019 to have one mailed, or print it from the county’s website, www.washington.pa.us. Under the label “tax assessment,” viewers should look for the menu that includes “reassessment information” and click on “For Tax Year 2017 Change of Assessment Appeal Form.”

The form can be found at http://www.co.washington.pa.us/DocumentCenter/View/2623.

The single-page document asks for the appellant’s name, phone number, parcel identification number, property location, reason for appeal and the appellant’s opinion of market value. It also asks for an address where a notice of the appeal hearing is to be mailed, the signature of the appellant and date. The form carries the caution, “Any appellant who fails to appear for the hearing at the time fixed shall be conclusively presumed to have abandoned the appeal unless the hearing date is rescheduled by mutual consent of the appellant and the board” of assessment appeals.

People have until Wednesday, Aug. 10, to schedule an assessment appeal. The proceedings will convene August through October.

“We haven’t begun scheduling yet this week as our department has been similarly inundated with phone calls,” Boni wrote. “That’s to be expected, though, in consideration of the fact that just over 110,000 pieces of mail went out simultaneously.”

The appeals are part of a formal process established by law.

In addition, Tyler Technologies Inc., the county’s contractor, convened 15,000 informal reviews from the end of March through May, said Scott Fergus, Washington County director of administration.

Like the informal reviews, the appeals will be heard at the Chapman Building, 351 W. Beau St., Washington.

The Washington and McGuffey school districts went to court in 2008 demanding a countywide property reassessment, citing the fact that boards of commissioners had not conducted one since 1981.

After the state Supreme Court refused to hear Washington County legal arguments to put off a reassessment, the commissioners hired Tyler Technologies at a cost of $6.9 million in 2013.

Those who want to know their tax levy, based on property value, will have to wait until later this year in the cases of the county and municipalities, and next spring for school districts.

State law requires counties, cities, boroughs and townships to enact their annual budgets by Dec. 31 of each year, and property values are to be certified by Nov. 15. School districts’ fiscal years, matching those of the state, operate on a July 1 through June 30 calendar.