Published: November 09, 2008 11:00 pm      

State says Hartwick reval is OK

HARTWICK "" State officials have ruled that a re-evaluation of property in the town of Hartwick will stand, but many residents, upset over what they see as inequities, say they want to bring in an outside consultant to review the assessments.

Officials from the town, county and state along with George Cade, who conducted the almost $80,000 reval, met last week in the county office building at the request of town's supervisor Pat Ryan after months of town board meetings filled with property owners upset about their new assessments.

Otsego County Director of Real Property Tax Services Steve Child noted David Williams of the state Office of Real Property Tax Services said during the meeting that the revaluation was fine. State officials conducted a number of statistical tests of the reval and found it held up.

``It's no different than any other reval,'' Child said. ``There's always some clean up to do.''

Property owners, he said, had an opportunity to go to Grievance Day or through the court system to contest their assessments before the adoption of the final assessment roll.

Hartwick has approximately 1550 parcels and 70 grievances were filed this year, Ryan said. Only three or four of the grievances resulted in a change to the assessments. Challenges from the Hartwick Commons and the Cooperstown Dreams Park are still in court.

Town Councilman Delos Field attended last week's meeting and said he was ``not happy at all'' with the state official's explanation.

Field said that at first he was not convinced there were problems, but evidence continued to mount that indicated there were too many inequities in the new assessments.

A motion from Field to hire an outside consultant to look at the reval has remained tabled for months, but is now likely to come up for a vote at tonight's town board meeting.

``It looks like we'll be able to pass the hat to afford to get a third, or unbiased opinion,'' he said.