National
Assocation of
Mass
Appraisers
National
Assocation of
Mass
Appraisers
To Whom It May Concern:
My municipality of Scarsdale, NY recently underwent a somewhat contentious mass reappraisal.
Mass reappraisals or revaluations of the assessed valuations of every single parcel in a municipality to ensure equity in the tax base are complicated endeavors with a host of moving parts.
Given the importance of real estate in our community in particular our 5,800 parcels are valued, in the aggregate, at just over $9 billion residents, myself among them, had many questions about the protocols, practices and, most importantly, the results involved in this undertaking.
Although the contractor had been made available on a couple of occasions, he was generally perceived as being non-responsive to both residents and the municipality's Board of Trustees. Too many unanswered questions. Not enough transparency. Too much opacity.
Seeking answers to our numerous questions, I searched the internet for experts in this field, and was fortunate enough to find the National Association of Mass Appraisers (NAMA) website. I reached out to NAMA president Bob Ehler.
Bob could not have been more responsive or more helpful in answering my questions, validating the items I raised on which I was right, correcting me on issues I raised on which I was wrong. Bob took the time to educate me a lay person with regard to Computer Assisted Mass Appraisal (CAMA) and bring me up to speed on the things I needed to know such as, for starters, whether the questions I'd come up with on my own were valid and needed to be asked. Importantly, he also mentored me on what both acceptable and unacceptable answers to those questions would look like.
In the end, very much thanks to Bob, we did, in fact, discover some significant irregularities with both the process and the results of our reval. Bob’s help was instrumental in keeping us focused on what mattered and making the most of our time and effort.
I am thankful that NAMA was available to be of service to myself and our community. I would like to thank Bob for all his assistance. I would recommend Bob and NAMA to anyone seeking CAMA services.
Josh Frankel