Port residents can expect a visit from the assessor

Port Washington property owners will be visited by the assessor beginning this summer as the city takes on a reassessment.

The Common Council on Tuesday approved a $219,000 contract with Associated Appraisal Consultants of Appleton for the revaluation, which will take place over two years beginning late this summer.

It will be a walk-through reassessment, with assessors inspecting houses inside and out.

The last time the city had a walk-through assessment was in 2012, Brown said.

At that point, the city was still recovering from the recession, officials said.

“Obviously, the market has changed over the last several years,” City Administrator Mark Grams said in a memo to aldermen.

Mark Brown, president of Associated Appraisal Consultants, said that his firm will begin visiting properties in the city in late August or September.

The visits are expected to take five to 15 minutes, he said, and property owners will be notified of the pending visits about two weeks in advance.

It will likely take until April 2021 to complete these visits, Brown said.

Assessors will carry a company ID and drive an easily identifiable company car, Brown said.

After people receive notices of their new assessment, open book sessions will be held to go over the changes, he said. That’s expected to occur in August 2021.

The new valuations will be effective in 2021.

The revaluation is required because properties in the city are currently assessed at 83% of fair market value, well below the 90% required by the state Department of Revenue.

Once the assessment ratio falls below 90%, communities have five years to do a revaluation, and Port fell below 90% four years ago, Brown said.

While property values are expected to increase with a reassessment, it does not mean that taxes will also increase since values are expected to go up across the board.

However, people whose properties appreciate more than the average will likely see a tax hike while those whose properties increase less than the average will see a tax cut.

The city will pay for the reassessment over three years with money it has borrowed.