Clarion County commissioners heard an update Tuesday on the county’s ongoing reassessment effort.
Sarah Garner, the project manager for Massachusetts-based Vision Government Solutions Inc., the firm conducting the reassessment of county properties, said the data for residential and commercial properties has been collected.
“We will continue to visit parcels for quality control and to collect additional data requested by the data entry and review teams,” Garner said.
The re-assessment began in July 2022 with data collection. The second phase is a market analysis that will be completed next month.
The valuation of the properties was completed in November, and phase four is a valuation review that will be completed in March. Garner said public hearings will be held in April and May.
Garner noted that parcels owned by PennWest Clarion haven’t been visited at this time.
Commissioner Ted Tharan has said the reassessment won’t result in a universal tax increase. About one third of the property owners will see a decrease in their taxes, one third will stay the same and one third will see an increase in taxes.
The final valuation will be based on the property values in 2024. There is an anti-windfall provision that prohibits the taxing body (the county) from making excessive gains.
Tharan said earlier the reassessment is necessary to “create an equitable distribution of the tax load.”
The total cost of the reassessment is $1.7 million.
In other business at Tuesday’s commissioners meeting, the panel denied a request from the North Country Trail Association to waive GIS fees for parcel data.
Leah Smith of the county’s GIS department said information requested by the county from North Country hasn’t been received.
The commissioners approved hiring the Herbert, Rowland & Grubic firm to provide professional consulting work for the development of a plan to improve access to the Clarion River from Cooksburg to Piney Dam.
Tharan said a large portion of the shoreline is government owned, and Commissioner Braxton White said the riverfront above Cooksburg has already been developed.
The cost of the study is $54,000 with the county sharing the cost with the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.
The commissioners also approved a contract with MVS Security Services to install five door access systems at the Clarion County Complex at a cost of $9,176.25.
The access systems are necessary to secure county offices that will be moved into the complex in April when work begins on the installation of the new HVAC system in the courthouse.