The crowd at the April 2 Town Hall meeting was standing room only and petitioners time lasted almost two hours. People with cable television can watch the meeting on channel 23 daily at 9 a.m. and 7 p.m.

At the meeting, the supervisor acknowledged that the comprehensive revaluation of Wawarsing properties is flawed. This has particularly onerous implications for some Cragsmoor residents and other Wawarsing property owners.

Cragsmoor Association noted that many of the assessment notifications mailed by the town to Cragsmoor residents are filled with errors related to the property inventory and are misleading as to the related tax impact of the new assessments. Troubling patterns emerge when comparing the assessed values of properties within the community, including disparate and disproportionate underlying land values, failure to either capture or properly classify vastly different housing stock, etc. Asking residents to "perfect" the consultant's data introduces parcel-by-parcel error that creates an even more flawed overall picture. This sort of "truing up" works counter to the stated objective of this reevaluation, which was to create a new point of departure for taxation that is based on fairness. More critically, many in our community are not tech-proficient, some do not own computers, and even for the computer-savvy, the process described by the town for addressing questions and assuring that their property is fairly assessed is confusing.

Whereas elected officials reported an overall assessed property value increase of 16 percent across Wawarsing's 6,300 properties, a fraction of the town's properties in Cragsmoor appear to be assessed 70 percent higher on average (in the aggregate). The patterns that emerge upon review of multiple property profiles reflect an apparent "prejudice" that is difficult to correlate to the real value of Cragsmoor property. Wealthy residents live in MANY places in Wawarsing. Cragsmoor — like everywhere else in Wawarsing — is ALSO home to people that are NOT wealthy trying to make a living in an economically depressed area, and to quite a few retirees living on Social Security. We have spoken with residents that are not tech-savvy, some that don't have computers, and many who find this situation and any recourse hard to wrap their heads around.

In short, the data is puzzling, and the solutions proposed by the town and village to date are unclear, while the gravity of the potential impact is unmistakeable.

The effects of imposing these values on Cragsmoor will be devastating. Properties that are not worth the assessed values may nevertheless be subject to the higher taxes enabled by the new values. Property owners that cannot afford new taxes and are forced to sell their properties will be hobbled by lower relative market values resulting from higher taxes. This dynamic is well-known to Ellenville and Wawarsing politicians: it is the very death spiral that the new reevaluation was intended to correct for Ellenville property owners.

At the meeting, Cragsmoor's own Dick Peters asked if the town could improve its chances of getting an accurate baseline reevaluation by taking a little more time to get it right — in Cragsmoor and any other pockets of Wawarsing where the numbers may seem out of whack. We don't know if this is possible, and it might cost more, but we think it's worth a look. After waiting decades for a fair assessment, a few more weeks to avoid the awesome consequences of getting this so wrong for so many hard-working taxpayers is definitely worth it.

Cragsmoor Association has requested access to information related to the re-evaluation. In the meantime, you should:

Review your 2015 Assessment Notification, which you should have gotten in the mail in February. If you did not receive it, contact the town clerk office at (845) 647-7800 and ask how to get a copy.

If you have questions about your assessment, make an appointment with Maxwell Appraisal Services immediately by calling (866) 727-2650.

You will be advised in the first week of May if any changes are made to your assessment as a result of your meeting with Maxwell.

If, after May 1st, you disagree with your assessment, you may file a formal grievance with the Board of Assessment Review.

A publication "How To File A Review of Your Assessment" complaint form RP-524 and instructions may be obtained from the ORPS website at www.tax.ny.gov.

Finally, talk to your neighbors about this. If they haven't heard about the reevaluation, and are unaware it may affect their property taxes, they should first contact the town and request their 2015 Assessment Notification, and then make an appointment with Maxwell to learn more. They are also welcome to contact Cragsmoor residents Kathleen Muldoon 648-6485, Pat Peters 647-6264 and Larry Gobrecht at 750-0227.