OBSERVER Photo by Gregory Bacon More than 100 people were in attendance at Monday’s Chautauqua Town Board meeting regarding reassessments.

MAYVILLE — Residents in the town of Chautauqua who feel their property is assessed too high will need to go before the Board of Assessment Review on Grievance Day to formally challenge the assessment.

More than 100 people attended a special Chautauqua Town Board meeting Monday to discuss the recent revaluation of town and village properties. At that meeting, it was announced that the town board is accepting the reassessment that was in the works for the past two years and that residents who have not yet requested an informal hearing cannot do so, but they can attend Grievance Day next month.

Along with town board members, in attendance at the meeting were assessor Anne Golley, former assessor Kevin Okerlund, and residential appraiser Heather Young-Deyell.

Young-Deyell began the meeting discussing how and why the recent reassessment was done. She noted that the last reassessment that took place in 2015 only included residential parcels. Vacant land and commercial assessments had not been reviewed since 2006.

“These factors alone indicate that all parcels were no longer being assessed at a uniform percentage of value,” she said.

Young-Deyell went over the nine steps required for a town-wide reassessment project including: confirming property data, neighborhood delineation, valuation modeling, notification to owners, informal review, filing the tentative assessment roll by May 1, Grievance Day and the Board of Assessment Review, and filing the final roll by July 1.

So far the assessor’s office has held about 300 informal hearings. Because May 1 is the filing date of the tentative assessment role, Young-Deyell said they no longer have time to schedule additional informal review meetings. Some residents have previously met with people in the assessment office, mailed in information, had phone interviews, or have sent emails detailing their concerns. Those individuals do not have to do anything further. Residents that have scheduled meetings will still be able to have them.

The assessor’s office is not currently scheduling Grievance Day hearings, however it will after May 1. Residents should call the office at 753-2236.

According to Okerlund, assessments in the town will likely increase 10-12% by the time the final roll is filed July 1. He estimated the current town of Chautauqua properties have a total value of $1.04 billion and will likely increase to somewhere around $1.14 billion.

One resident said he purchased his property in 2015 for $100,000 and is now proposed to be assessed at $140,000. He made less than $8,000 worth of improvements on it. “That’s more than 12%,” he said.

Young-Deyell responded that it is “an extremely volatile market right now” and said they couldn’t go back to 2015 when reviewing sales. “Those are outside of the realm of acceptable sales range because they become too dated,” she said.

Some residents complained that they did not get their initial revaluation until this month, making it difficult to schedule informal hearings. Officials said the information was mailed out at the beginning of March so any delays would have been the fault of the post office.

Residents were also upset that Monday’s meeting was held after anyone could schedule informal hearings. Town Supervisor Don Emhardt said he couldn’t have the meeting sooner because of the scheduling conflict with running a legal notice.

Other residents said it was wrong for the town board to be doing a reassessment during a pandemic, while one person called on the town officials to resign and dissolve the town government.

One option residents who have multiple parcels have is to combine the parcels into one parcel. That’s because the smaller parcels are assessed at higher amounts per acre than larger amounts. For example, for open farmland, a 10 acre parcel is assessed at $2,500 an acre, 20 acres would go for about $2,000 an acre, 50 acres would go for around $1,500 an acre and 100 acres would go for $900 an acre.

After the meeting, Emhardt said he hopes residents have a better understanding of the reassessment process. “I think they did a really good job of explaining it,” he said.