By Glenn Rolfe

GEORGETOWN – Ground-rules, schedule, hopes and expectations in Sussex County’s first countywide property reassessment in nearly five decades were offered this week.

“We really appreciate the business and look forward to doing a good job for you guys,” said Paul Miller, Tyler Technologies’ Eastern Region sales lead representative in prefacing his presentation during the June 15 county council meeting.

The three-year reassessment project begins this summer.

Legal action brought it to the forefront.

This past April, County Council agreed to enter into a settlement agreement with plaintiffs — Delawareans for Educational Opportunity and the NAACP Delaware Conference of Branches — in the education funding lawsuit brought against all three Delaware counties, Sussex, Kent and New Castle in the Court of Chancery in 2018. The suit alleged that an inadequate and outdated model for valuing property shortchanges Delaware students and public schools.

Despite the county’s challenge to the litigants’ claims, the court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs last year, and then ordered all parties to work toward a remedy.

“All properties must be same assessed at same standard of value to ensure equity, each property owner paying their fair share of the property tax. That at its core is what this is about,” said Mr. Miller. “In 1974 the county went about that process and as time goes on even the most efficient and best reassessment job will lose its ability to predict value and keep equity through time. So, after as many years as it has been, four decades plus, it’s time to re-establish that equity through the reassessment.”

Cost to Sussex County for Tyler Technologies to tackle the county’s first property reassessment since 1974 is $9,070,818. There is a $44 per parcel overage rate for any amount over 185,402 parcels between now and 2024.

The monumental door-to-door data collection task includes in-person visits to every one of the 182,000-plus property/parcels, structure measurement and speaking with homeowners and property owners about property characteristics.

Tyler Technologies field workers will utilize tablets to electronically upload data to the county’s CAMA (computer-assisted mass appraisal) system for data analytics.

“Basically, what we are trying to do is predict what every property would sell for,” Mr. Miller said. “So, we’re using the same information you would use if you were a buyer of house. You would look at what other houses are selling for. That would influence your judgment on how much you would be willing to offer for a particular house. In a nutshell, that is what we’re doing through this process – trying to predict what every single property would sell for if it were for sale.”

Every property will be photographed. Aerial imaging taken from aircraft will be used, Mr. Miller said.

The reassessment project is scheduled to begin July 1. The targeted competition date is Feb. 15, 2024.

July through September 2021 is targeted for preparation and planning. Door-to-door data collection is scheduled from late 2021 to early 2023 with data analysis slated from early to mid-2023 followed by valuation review from mid-2023 to early 2024.

“I’d like to make it as easy as possible for people. Because this is a big deal,” said Sussex County Councilman John Rieley.

General reassessment of all properties is to be completed in time for tax bills to be issued in the latter half of 2024.

Mr. Miller said informal meetings with taxpayers will be held, where taxpayers “get a notice of value and come in and talk to us one on one, as far as if they have a problem with their value or they just want education on the process.”

Data collectors

Tyler’s fleet of data collectors will have county-issued IDs and wear yellow vests. They are trained on interaction with the public, Mr. Miller said.

“We’re very aware that we are going to people’s homes, very respectful trying to get the information to be correct yet not be too intrusive on the public. It’s a balance,” said Mr. Miller.

He added Tyler Technologies will report to the local police departments “who we have, so the public is informed. Because it can be a little startling when someone shows up at your door.”

Each property will get one in-person visit by an official data collector. “When nobody is home, we’ll leave a door hangar at the property. It lets owners know somebody was there.”

Property owners can request a data collector to come for “an inspection if they want to be there when we’re there,” Mr. Miller said.

Tyler Technologies, whose business roots date to 1938, has more than 15,000 local government clients throughout all 50 states, according to Chris Keeler, Sussex County Director of Assessment.

Tyler Technologies’ $9 million-plus bid was by far the lowest of two received by the county for the reassessment project. The other bid, from Pearson’s Appraisal Service, had a project completion date of January 2025 and a base amount of $13,973,000.

Mr. Keeler at the June 15 meeting noted the county has already purchased and use Tyler’s iasWorld Assessment Software that will be utilized to perform the reassessment project.

It’s in the mail

Fall 2023 is targeted for the mailings.

“With a county this size, usually we’ll break it up into maybe three or four mailings. Because the informal process will be one on one, we’ll need rooms big enough to handle the people coming in,” Mr. Miller said. “The last job we finished was Delaware County, Pennsylvania – 200,000 parcels. We cut it into four mailings. It worked well.”

“We want to correct anything that is wrong,” Mr. Miller said.

That, Mr. Miller says, will require proof. “Bring information with you that shows me. Show me pictures of the inside of your property where there is water damage or show me some sales in your neighborhood that are below $250,000, or your house is a little smaller. Something that maybe I didn’t see from the outside and from all the data I had. Help me understand it better.” Mr. Miller said.

“Ones that we are high, it could be a data error or just a judgment call that is different,” Mr. Miller said. “We don’t get paid any more money whether we’re high or low. We want to get it as accurate as possible. So, any good information we get, we use.”

Nobody is perfect

Data mailers sent to every house/property will include photo, sketch, pertinent data, when it was built, number or rooms and other information.

“What we are basically saying, “This is what we have on file. This is what we’re going to use to value your property. Please let us know if it is not correct.’ Because I can promise everybody here, there will be errors. We’re humans. We’re collecting a lot of data – 182,000 parcels. The number of pieces of data per parcel probably is above 100 when you take on the different items. So, the ability to make errors is there,” said Mr. Miller. “This is a big tool for us, to interact with the homeowner. Nobody knows a property better than the homeowner.

Mr. Miller added, “I don’t know if you know this, but people will lie to us — sometimes. But those are very rare.”

Reassessment website

The project in Sussex will include a specific website.

“There will be website pictures of our data collections, frequently asked questions (FAQs), short videos, information on reassessment: what it is? Why do we do it? Key dates. Public information is a big part of what to do,” said Mr. Miller said. “It’s a very confusing topic. Mathematically it’s confusing. How does my old assessment relate to my new assessment? Are my taxes going up 38 times because my value went up 38 times? That part is confusing.”

“A whole generation of people have grown up in Sussex County where the assessment didn’t have anything to do with what it would sell for because it was such an older value. Now, it will be. Convincing people that that is how it is and that’s how it works is a big part of the process,” Mr. Miller said. “So the more educated the public is, the more when we are at the end of the job and we mail notices of the value they’ll look at the value and understand more about what went into it, and they’ll understand the purpose of it and hopefully they’ll just look at the number and say, ‘Could I sell my house for this?’ That is the end goal. We want them to be educated enough to focus on what’s important: Did we get the value right? And the website goes a long way to do that.”

Unique properties, like chicken houses

Councilman Rieley offered his family’s farm property in rural Millsboro as an example of a “unique” property.

“We have a good sized home. We have some chicken houses that are 30 years old, but they are still in production. I’ve heard them valued at anywhere from a dollar to the income that we derive from them,” said Mr. Rieley. “There are a lot of chicken farms in Sussex County. If you assessed ours on the cost basis, I mean, the houses cost $100,000 30 years ago. They probably cost $400,000 if we built them today.”

“If it’s 30 years old, it’s $400,000 minus depreciation,” Mr. Miller said. “Unique properties are what we should talk to people about. Those are the ones that should funnel down to where we sit with them because they are unique. Somebody builds a house out of a fire hall, what’s it worth? Well, let’s sit down and try and figure it out. It’s not easy.”

“Chicken farms, the more of them there are the more data we will have,” said Mr. Miller. “Hopefully one or two of them have sold … give us a line of sight on it. But we do anticipate engaging the public for unique properties more than the vast majority which aren’t unique properties.”