It should be a full house tonight for the Council meeting. Under consideration will be a resolution to halt the citywide revaluation process, terminate the City's contract with GAR Associates, reject the preliminary assessments, and "adopt those valuations of real property set forth on the City's 2018 Assessment Roll as 100% valuations of all said real property in the City of Hudson as the City's 2019 Assessment Roll." The existence of such a resolution has been known since Friday, when Peter Meyer, who has been leading the protest against the revaluation, announced in an email "some very good news." Late yesterday, the resolution appeared for the first time among the documents on the agenda for tonight's Common Council meeting. Initial reasons set forth in the resolution are these:
WHEREAS, the City of Hudson has an obligation to its taxpayers to ensure fair and transparent assessments (and thus taxation), which obligation was one of the principal bases on which the American Revolution was prosecuted; and
WHEREAS, the City's fulfillment of this obligation is particularly important in a time of financial stress on both residential and commercial property owners as well as their tenants, all of whom will be adversely affected by unfair and unsupported assessments. . . .The resolution goes on to allege that "GAR has failed, to date, to provide data supporting its valuations of properties (other than providing four comparables it used for individual residential property assessments to the individual owners of same, and then only upon such property owner's request, and on two days' advance notice via email) included in the aforementioned 2019 Assessment Notifications. . . . "
It is expected that the resolution will not only be introduced but also voted on at tonight's meeting.
COPYRIGHT 2019 CAROLE OSTERINK
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