Lackawanna County is going through its first reassessment of all land and buildings since the 1960s.
The county Board of Commissioners voted 2-1 on March 2, 2022, to hire Tyler Technologies Inc. of Plano, Texas, to conduct a reassessment. Two months later, by the same margin, they vote to sign an almost $5.2 million contract with Tyler.
Since July 2022, Tyler data collectors gathered descriptions of all 102,685 taxable pieces of land, including buildings, lot sizes and other details that people normally look at to determine if they want to buy a home.
As Tyler completed each community, the company mailed descriptions of properties to owners so they could correct mistakes.
The descriptions include number of living units, the style, year built, height, heating system, air conditioning, fireplaces; total number of rooms, bedrooms, full and half bathrooms; basements and whether they’re finished; and total living area.
The process has raised many questions about what to expect, especially when it comes to property taxes.
WVIA has compiled frequently asked questions and obtained answers based on information provided by officials of Tyler Technologies Inc. and county assessment director Patrick Tobin.
Q: Will the reassessment increase the value used to calculate annual property taxes on my home, business, farm or vacant land?
A: Yes. If you’ve received a notice on new values, you know the value of your property is dramatically higher. All real estate is more valuable now than it was in the 1960s. But if you see a higher value on your home than now, don’t assume your taxes are going up.
Q: Doesn’t a higher value automatically mean my property taxes will go up?
A: No, not necessarily. Historically, after a reassessment, taxes rise on one-third of properties, stay about the same on a third and decline on the other third.
“What a reassessment does is it brings fairness and equity,” Tyler project manager Samantha Edwards said at a recent public meeting. “So, when assessments increase, it doesn't necessarily mean that your taxes will increase.”
Q: Why don’t taxes automatically go up on everybody who owns land or buildings when values rise because of reassessment?
A: Because the millage rate used to calculate taxes this year must go down when the new values take effect on Jan. 1, 2026. That’s state law.
Q: Why will the millage rate go down?
A: Because reassessment alone cannot produce more revenue next year than this year for a county, city, borough, township or school district.
Which means county, city, borough, township and school district millage rates have to drop dramatically as the total value of all properties countywide rises dramatically.
“When the assessed value is no longer a five-gallon bucket, it's a 50-gallon drum, the millage rates have to go down,” Tobin said. “It's that simple.”
Q: This all sounds really complicated. Are my taxes going up or not?
A: You won’t know that for sure until November or December when the county, cities, boroughs and townships and the Scranton School District set the new, lower millage rates.
The county plans to finalize the new values by Nov. 15 and will send each town and the Scranton School District its total valuation. The towns and the district will use the valuation to calculate the new millage rate.
A millage rate refers to mills, the term used to denote the tax rate. A mill is a $1 tax on ever $1,000 of property value.
For example, if the millage rate is 10 mills and a property value is $200,000, that’s a $10 tax on every $1,000. You multiply 10 by 200 (it’s that many thousands) to get the tax, which equals $2,000.
Once you have the new millage rates, then you can calculate for certain what your property taxes will be next year. Waiting until the new millage rates are set is the best way to know for sure if your taxes are going up, county officials say.
Then, you can compare that to what you paid this year.
Remember, millage rates vary by city, borough, township, school district and county.
Whether your taxes go up, down or stay the same because of reassessment will depend on how much your value changes compared to how others’ values change.
Q: Why is the Scranton School District getting its values before the other school districts?
A: Scranton operates on a calendar year budget and must know its values earlier because its 2026 budget goes into effect Jan. 1, the same time as the reassessed values.
The other school districts operate on a fiscal year that begins July 1 and ends June 30.
Tobin said the county will wait because new homes or businesses may be built between November and the spring. That could change a total valuation for a school district.
Q: Are the new millage rates calculated based on the new values guaranteed to be the millage rates for 2026?
A: No. The county, cities, boroughs, townships and school districts can raise that millage rate to produce up to 10% more revenue in 2026.
Q: So there you go, reassessment will raise my taxes, right?
A: No, not necessarily. Again, that will depend on if you fall into the third that pays higher taxes, about the same or lower taxes. But it will also depend on whether the county or a city, borough, township or school district raise taxes to produce more revenues. Remember, they can’t produce more than 10% more revenues with their new millage rate.
Q: How does Tyler calculate the values after collecting the data that describes properties.
A: Tyler has its own computer-assisted mass appraisal program that accounts for all the factors that go into determining value and the program comes up with the values.
“It's tried and true,” Tobin said. “Tyler Technologies is the oldest mass appraisal company in the country, and they have a very good reputation. And I feel in the three years I've worked with them, that they've done a very good job so far.”
Q: OK, so I just got my new value in the mail. It looks wrong. What can I do about it?
A: First, ask yourself if the valuation looks like what you could get for your property if you sold it. If it is, chances are the assessed value is correct or close to it.
If you don’t think so, you can schedule an informal in-person review with a Tyler representative.
“If you don't agree with that, call us, or if you want to know, where did we come up with that value? Did you make those changes based on my data mailer? That is the time that we'll handle those,” Edwards said.
Q: How do I schedule an informal review?
A: Call 844-440-6045 between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday within 10 days of the date on your notice. You can also schedule online at tylertech.com/Lackawanna. All informal reviews must be completed by April 30.
During that review, a Tyler Technology staffer will show you the five properties used to calculate your property value. They should be roughly similar.
Q: How can I prove my new assessment is wrong?
A: By supplying evidence. The acceptable forms of evidence include:
- Comparable sales between Jan. 1, 2022 and June 30, 2024. This means homes similar to yours in your neighborhood.
- Active sales listing can be supporting evidence, though not direct evidence like comparable sales.
- Real-estate appraisals dated between Jan. 1, 2022, and June 30, 2024.
- Photos that show deteriorating conditions of a home, structure outside the home or land.
You should submit all that documentation before your formal review. It can be emailed to LackawannaCoPa@tylertech.com or dropped at the reassessment office at the Lackawanna County Government Center, 123 Wyoming Ave., 5th Floor, Scranton, Pa., 18503.
Q: If I didn’t get a data mailer, can I still get one and make changes, even if I got a tentative assessed value letter? Once I return it, does someone make the change?
A: Yes.
“We make the change, and the change is reflected as soon as we make that change, because of the computer-assisted mass appraisal software that we use,” Edwards said. “We import models specific to Lackawanna County through the data that we've analyzed. Once those models are put into the system, all we do is plug in the information and it gives us a value.”
Q: What comparable properties within that 2022-2024 period can we use to challenge our reassessed value?
A: Tyler officials say if you're looking for comparable homes or similar properties to yours, look for properties that are down the street or no farther than within your town. “Try to stay within your school district, but within your municipality, that would narrow it down,” Edwards said.
Q: What evidence won’t count?
A: Inadmissible evidence includes:
- The current assessed value.
- Invalid or “arms-length” sales, meaning properties that were sold under duress such as during a divorce, bankruptcy or at a sheriff’s sale; bank-owned; foreclosures, short sales and sales within a family.
- The tax effect. Your taxes going up isn’t an argument for changing the assessed value.
- Estimated values from online real-estate sites such as Zillow, Redfin, HomeLight and Realtor.com.
Q: What if I’m unhappy with Tyler’s explanation?
A: You can appeal to the county Board of Assessment Appeals. You can find the form here.
The county is hiring auxiliary boards to handle what’s expected to be a sharp increase in appeals. The appeals will be heard between Aug. 1 and Oct. 31 as they are yearly.
Q: Is my property being compared to properties in other towns?
A: Generally, no. Tyler uses only home sales in a neighborhood. You can find out what neighborhood for your property by asking Tyler during the informal review.
Q: If I see a nearby house sold last week or last month for less than my new assessment says my house is worth, can I use that sale to fight for a lower assessment on my house?
A: No. Tyler used sales from between Jan. 1, 2022, to July 1, 2024. You have to go by sales in the period.
Q: Will a reassessment pick up improvements to my home since the last reassessment?
A: Yes and no. If the improvements are outside, they may count toward your new assessment. For example, if you added a pool or expanded your home, that would count.
Whether improvements inside a home count depends on what you reported on forms Tyler sent you last year asking you to correct mistakes in the description of your home. Tyler data collectors didn’t go inside people’s homes. They measured and observed the way homes and surrounding properties looked from outside.
Q: Is it too late to change that form?
A: No. You can call 570-963-6728 to find out what to do about that. You can also email Edwards at Samantha.Edwards@tylertech.com
Q: Is vacant land being reassessed?
A: Yes.
“We look at it the same way that we value anything with an improvement,” Edwards said. “What are sales going for on the open market for vacant land that are similar size, similar topography to the lots that you have? Is it a buildable lot, or is it, you know, 50 square feet that you can't put anything on.”
Q: Why do we need a reassessment anyway? Can’t we just keep using the values from the 1960s?
A: No, the values used to calculate property taxes now are way out of whack. They are 1960s values, which means they are way too low. It also means some people are paying an unfair amount of taxes while others are paying too little.
Because of that, the county faced a lawsuit that aimed to force a reassessment.
In July 2018, the Community Justice Project, a Reading-based non-profit, sued the county in the name of three Scranton residents to force a reassessment. They argued the values are unfair because they're so old, they're out of whack. The residents’ suit said they pay too much in taxes because some people pay too little.
Courts in other counties forced reassessments so Lackawanna County officials concluded they would lose the lawsuit. In May 2022, the county agreed to carry out the assessment to resolve the lawsuit.
Q: OK, so who do I blame for all this? Gaughan? McGloin? Chermak?
A: Well, you can blame who you want, but only Commissioner Chris Chermak was in office when the commissioners approved it, and he voted no.
Chermak worried the county didn’t have a program in place to help homeowners on fixed incomes. He assumed reassessment would raise taxes on some people so high they couldn’t afford the property taxes and would be forced out of their homes.
Q: Is that true?
A: Again, hard to tell, but the rule of thumb (see above) is taxes rise on a third of properties. When the new millage rates come out in the fall, we’ll know for sure how it all plays out.
Q: What about Gaughan and McGloin?
Neither Bill Gaughan nor Matt McGloin were commissioners when the county hired Tyler to do the reassessment. But both support it. Former commissioners Debi Domenick and Jerry Notarianni approved the reassessment because it was so long overdue.
Q: Is there a program to help elderly property owners who might have to pay higher taxes because of reassessment?
A: No, not right now, though the commissioners have talked about starting one.
Q: Do swimming pools count toward your assessed value?
A: Yes, if they are built-in pools. “If you indicate on the data mailer that the pool is not usable, it has collapsed, a data collector will come out to confirm that information and it will not be part of your assessment,” Tobin said.
Q: Will gazebos be added to an assessed value?
“Not if they’re under 250 square feet,” Edwards said.
