Assessor's Mission Statement
Our interests and goals are directed toward developing customer
understanding of, and satisfaction with, the way the NYS Real Property
Tax Law is formulated, equitably and uniformly applied and improved.
The City Assessor makes all assessments for general tax or special
assessments purposes in accordance with the provisions of the New York
State Real Property Tax Law and shall perform such other functions as
may be required by the City Charter or other Law.
The Assessor maintains the assessment roll -- the document which
contains every property assessment. To do this, the physical
description, or inventory, and value estimate of every parcel of real
property in the municipality is kept up to date. The property
inventory is available for inspection by appointment before the filing
of the Tentative Assessment Roll.
Assessors are interested only in fairly assessing property in their
assessing using. If an assessment is correct and the tax bill
still seems too high, the assessor cannot change that.
Complaints to the assessor must be about how property is assessed.
It is up to individual property owners to monitor their own
assessments. Taxpayers who feel they are not being fairly
assessed should meet with their assessor before the tentative
assessment roll is established.
Taxpayers unhappy with growing property tax bills should not be
concerned only with assessments. They should also examine the
scope of budgets and expenditures of the taxing jurisdictions and
address those issues in appropriate and available public forums.
