A new assessment software program based on aerial photography flagged approximately 12,000 Luzerne County structures and property additions that must be reviewed to make sure they were picked up for taxation, according to the county assessor’s office.
Office workers started chipping away at the list last month amid other duties, county Assessment Director Anthony Alu said Wednesday.
“It’s challenging to say the least. We still have a long way to go,” he said.
County Manager C. David Pedri told county council members last month he eventually will provide monthly updates of new properties and additions identified through the software.
Alu said he does not yet have figures on how many listed properties were reviewed and added to date. He cautioned the additions will be far less than 12,000 because the lion’s share of properties checked so far already had been added to the tax rolls.
The software pinpointed all building footprint changes that occurred between flyovers in 2008 and 2016, Alu said. It did not include a check of current assessment data to rule out ones that had been detected — a task that now falls on the assessor’s office, he said.
“We found some but not a lot,” Alu said in reference to missed properties. “The first two days, I looked up a bunch and didn’t find any that were missed.”
The list also includes some sheds under 200 square feet that are not subject to taxation and properties that have been demolished and warrant removal from the tax rolls, Alu said.
As missed properties are identified, Alu said he will attempt to figure out the reasons they were not picked up.
One culprit may be the failure of some municipalities to forward building permits, which are the primary way assessors become aware of new construction, he said.
Most municipalities appear to regularly produce permits, largely prompted by a push from his office in recent years, he said.
“We need to make sure they’re consistent and getting all these permits to us,” he said, noting municipalities also benefit from increased revenue when properties are added.
Owners also sometimes fail to obtain building permits as required, particularly in rural areas with large tracts where construction is not visible from highways, Alu said.
Properties can’t be added until the exteriors are personally examined by assessor evaluators trained to gather measurements and other descriptions and calculate values, he said. He has five on staff and is in the process of filling a sixth vacant position.
Alu believes this batch of flagged items is unusually large because the software captured eight years of changes. Future flyover updates may occur more frequently, he said.
“I pushed for this software because it’s a great tool to assist. Aerials will show us what we can’t see,” Alu said.
County officials had discussed the software for years but decided it was now financially feasible because Department of Homeland Security grant funding covered the two necessary flyovers that would have cost the county an estimated $100,000 each, officials said.
Workers from Rochester-based Pictometry International Corp. photographed each of the more than 165,000 county properties from multiple angles by air, county officials said. Piggybacking onto that contract, the county acquired a $45,000 program digitizing all structure outlines and a $50,000 one using that imagery to flag new construction.
County officials have predicted revenue generated from the taxation of missed properties eventually will cover the software costs.
