Syracuse, NY – When Journalists from Syracuse.com investigated the city’s properties six years ago and found serious inequalities FAVETTANT The richer owners, the mayor Ben Walsh promised His administration would do something.
While pushing the city’s assessment service to assess more properties each year to eliminate the problem, the administration has also worked towards the ultimate solution: an expensive re -evaluation of more than 40,000 properties. It is a job that the state recommends doing as often as possible, but something that Syracuse has not approached for 30 years.
The mayor spoke of the re -evaluation in several speeches of the state of the city. He put money in the 2024-25 budget to start it, and the common council supported spending with their vote a year ago. In the fall, the evaluation service presented a request for proposals to request a company to make the big dupbage from 2025. In its city speech in mid-January, Walsh said it was finally time to advance the project.
Until this time, the Walsh administration thought it had the support of the city’s legislators, in part because no one had spoken. But at the end of March, the project struck a wall when the advisers quickly postponed a draft re -evaluation contract. Now they are about to reduce funding for reassessment in the next budget.
The reason for the sudden opposition is in debate. The advisers underline the rampant economic uncertainty with the start of the new Trump administration in Washington, as well as the need to reduce the budget proposal.
Walsh, however, thinks that something simpler and closer to his home is at stake – the mayor’s race in 2025.
Walsh takes what is a rare step to strongly and publicly criticize two legislators in the city for their statements on the re -evaluation project. They are the two advisers who run to replace him in a race against his assistant.
Common advisers Chol Majok And Pat Hogan said during a democratic primary debate On Wednesday, they are opposed to moving a re -evaluation project for three -year goods. The two have cited concerns about a common perception according to which the re -evaluations result in larger tax invoices, even if it is not true in about two -thirds of the cases.
“Logic does not matter here,” said Hogan. “People are now under high pressure.”
In an interview on Thursday, Walsh noted that the advisers did not postpone the re -evaluation discussions before this spring, in the middle of the primary campaign season.
“I have no doubt that the mayor’s campaign influences the positions of Hogan and Majok advisers and it’s disappointing,” said Walsh. “I think our voters, above all, want you to direct and that you are willing to make difficult decisions, and that’s not what they are doing right now.”
Hogan and Majok rejected this assertion and said that Walsh should have known better than to start a re -evaluation contract when examining the annual council budget.
The other candidate of the primary mayor Democratic is the deputy mayor of Walsh, Sharon Owens. She said that the re -evaluation must be carried out so that decades of inequitable assessments are corrected.
A proposal Hiring an entrepreneur to do the work for $ 1.8 million has been part of the agenda since the end of March, but the legislators have delayed the vote. They are now likely to vote Thursday on the abolition of funding included for work in the Walsh budget proposal for 2025-26 instead of voting on the contract.
Hogan was the most frank against the re -evaluation project, saying that with economic uncertainty in the national economy under the new Trump administration, the start of the re -evaluation work would only worry about local taxpayers.
A reassessment would not present the tax invoices of landowners in 2028.
Walsh said Hogan chooses to spread this fear instead of educating voters on the revaluation objective and how it relates to land tax bills. He was particularly frustrated by Hogan’s declaration during the debate that “logic does not matter” when it comes to discussing the re -evaluations
“It’s absurd,” said Walsh on Thursday. “It is clear that it is motivated by politics, and it is not leadership. A leader, in particular someone like the Hogan advisor, who is a veteran and a long -standing member of the Common council, should lead the charge with his colleagues and with his voters, and instead, he chooses Canier and to cover. ”
Hogan said that Walsh’s accusations are “ridiculous” and have reiterated its position according to which economic anxiety is now a terrible moment to start the project, even if changes in evaluation would not take effect for at least three years.
“Some people live in a utopian world, such as the mayor and his gang, and maybe they don’t realize how nervous people are,” said Hogan.
Majok agreed with Hogan and also declared that he simply did not trust the assertion of the Walsh administration that a re -evaluation would correct iniquity.
“You can’t just follow certain optics that say” Oh, it’s a good thing “, and you don’t have data to prove that it’s a good thing,” said Majok on Thursday. “We cannot count on this.”
Syracuse has not re -evaluated ownership at the city scale since 1995. The average ownership of the city is now evaluated at 57.5% of what is worth on the current market, according to state estimates. But some properties are assessed much closer to the real value, while others are well below. The result is that some taxpayers, who have often been among the poorest owners, bear an unjust part of the tax burden.
The State Department of Taxation and Finance Encourages municipalities To make complete reassessments as often as possible, saying that it is “better way to guarantee that the assessments are fair and precise. … If the total amount of taxes collected is a pie, the size of the pie is determined by the municipal councils, the municipal councils, the school councils and the county legislatures. The reaffer has no impact on the size of the pie;
The re -evaluation in itself does not increase the tax invoices, a Walsh point stressed and hopes that the majority of advisers consider. Syracuse’s evaluation commissioner Matt Oja said the city’s tax rate by $ 1,000 of evaluation would likely decrease after reassessment, as there will be a larger total tax base.
But after having approved money a year ago which is in the current year’s budget to start a revaluation at the city level, advisers are now ready to reduce the project budget by around $ 1 million in the proposed 2025-26 budget to advance the project, said Hogan. The Council seeks to reduce spending to eliminate the increase proposed by Walsh by 2% land taxation which would help close a budgetary deficit of approximately 27 million dollars.
“The advisers do our functions and that’s essentially that,” said Hogan. “His administration presented us a budget that has a hole of $ 27 million, and it is not tolerable.”
Walsh said that the administration had proposed that its data and analysis services review the evaluation numbers with the advice to help them better understand the need for reassessment. It is also proposed to divide the re -evaluation contract into phases, so that the Council can simply authorize its future with the data collection phase of the work and vote on the evaluation phase later.
“I always keep the hope that the majority of the council is doing the right thing,” said Walsh.
Majok said he would still not be comfortable with a progressive approach using a paying outdoor entrepreneur.
“Why are we not just chewing our own numbers?” He said. “Just do this first rather than spending money.”
Stressing the budget proposal which includes an increase in tax rates, Hogan said that he and his colleagues advisers cannot focus on the details of the re -evaluation contract for the moment. Instead, they try to find ways to reduce expenses, keep the tax rate flat and further preserve the city’s reserves.
“We have to face reality,” he said.
City journalist Jeremy Boyer can be joined to jboyer@syracuse.com(315) 657-5673, Twitter Or Facebook.