MORAVIA - Property in the town of Moravia is continuing to be reassessed, and town assessor Linda Wright had an idea for making assessments more accurate and equitable. She asked the town board to consider contracting with the county Real Property Tax Services office to do the modeling (comparison) segment of the process and produce valuation documents, which include market analysis and cost analysis.

The Moravia Town Board unanimously approved the measure.

Alan Kozlowski, director of real property tax services for the county, said this would be the first time his office would contract assessing services for a town, but they had the package using existing sales according to state regulations and the computer would help the town build property values.

“We're not looking to get into your business,” Kozlowski said. “We want to provide services openly and accurately.” He asked the board for approval so that he could go to the county Legislature next week for permission to do any contracting. He assured the board if it changed its mind, the agreement could be pulled.

Wright explained that her values for town property would be matched up with sales so that even the kind of neighborhood a house was in could be compared to ones in other towns. Neighborhood codes have been changed to correspond with ones in other towns.

“That makes it easier to compare properties so we can do the job better than before,” she said.

“We have ramped up the ability to gather sales from more areas,” Kozlowski said.

Data sets are available almost without regard for town lines.

Kozlowski said he could charge $2 per parcel for the service, which is what the town would have paid Tom Bloodgood, director of Schuyler County Property Tax Agency. Jeff Lowe from New York State Office of Real Property Service would help the town set up the program with the county. Kozlowski said he would do it with his own staff.

“The only caveat,” Kozlowski said, “is we haven't done this before, but Jeff Lowe will back us up.”

“It will allow us to do a thorough and more extensive job,” Wright said, “with more depth and scope.”

She said she would go back three years for modeling sales in the town and that by the end of April, all sales will be retransmitted.

Wright expects to have the model prepared between June and July. She will take out preliminary market estimates to see if they fit her calculations, then will go back out into the field in October to review values of the whole town.

There are 1,450 parcels in the town with each one requiring two documents.

The final values are modeled on sales per square foot, abstracts, and allocations for waterfront property, based on price per front. Elevation will also be factored in.

Wright said she uses pictometry in all of her data collection and noted that although she had maps for flood hazard areas, tax map numbers were missing.

Kozlowski said he had that information digitally stored online. The county is going onto a new system of its own design which is map based and is now running it simultaneously with Image Mate, the system it will drop when it's sure the new one is glitch free. He believes the switch will happen by June 1.

Staff writer Kathleen Barran can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 238 or e-mail

kathleen.barran@lee.net