Jamestown Assessor Heather Young-Deyell presents on her Department’s 2027 Budget (November 9, 2026)
Jamestown’s City Assessor is proposing a city-wide reassessment project that she says could potentially lower the tax rate.
Assessor Heather Young-Deyell, during budget presentations to Jamestown City Council, said according to the New York State Office of Real Property Tax the City is only assessing property at 61% of market value at this time. The state recommends municipalities do a revaluation every 5 years. It has been 20 years since Jamestown last did one.
Young-Deyell said the stigma around doing a reassessment is that people believe their taxes will go up, which she said is not true, “During a reassessment, we are simply redistributing a tax base that already exists. If a tax levy that you create remains relatively unchanged, but we increase the tax base, we would be able to shift the rate downward and collect less from each individual per $1000 of assessed value. Typically when we do these projects, it goes on a third, third, third. A third of the property values go up, a third stay relatively the same, and a third see their taxes decrease.”
Young-Deyell said that when the City’s equalization rate shifts downward New York School Tax Relief Program (STAR) payments also go down. She said this is due to Real Property Tax Law that states STAR payment amounts cannot increase from the previous year if the equalization rate has shifted downwards.
Young-Deyell said she has reached out to KLW Group of Buffalo and GAR Associates of Williamsville who did the last reassessment in 2004 through 2006.
She said it would be a two to three year process that she estimates would cost around $1 million.
In February 2022, City Council unanimously voted down a resolution to spend $285,000 to hire GAR Associates to do the revaluation that year. Former City Assessor Lisa Volpe had informed Council that if they waited beyond February of that year to approve doing a revaluation, the cost would go from $285,000 to $685,000 due to current data being considered too old to use by New York State.
Council member at large Russ Bonfiglio asked if a revaluation is something the City could bond for. Young-Deyell and City Comptroller Ericka Thomas said they’d have to research that.
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