Assessor: Home

The Assessment Department is responsible for data collection and appraisal of commercial, industrial agricultural, residential and vacant properties within the Town of Clay. We also administer all exemptions, review and analyze sales data, manage the equalization rate, defend the Town in assessment related court cases, and disseminate large volumes of assessment and tax related data to the general public.  The Assessor is available by appointment throughout the year to discuss assessment related topics.  We recognize that the issue of property taxes and its congruence with assessments is a complicated and emotional issue.  The Assessors’ office would like property owners to be aware that WE DO NOT set budgets or levy taxes.  The tax rates seen on your tax bills are the result of the expenditures and levy requests of the taxing jurisdictions in which you reside.

The Assessor will review your assessment at any time during the year upon the filing of an “Assessment Review Consent Form” available at our offices.   Any request for an Assessment Review must include supporting data with such form.  From this point on, the Assessor will only consider an assessment reduction upon full interior and exterior inspection of your property.  Keep in mind that for assessment purposes (mass appraisal purposes) all buildings are measured from the OUTSIDE, where a fee appraiser will generally measure the inside.  The reason is simple.  Quite frankly, no one wants the Assessor in their house, while a fee appraiser is doing his job at your request for some type of possible financial gain (refinance, for example).  Since all data collected has to adhere to the same process and principles, Assessors measure the outside for all properties.

The Town of Clay appraises property at a partial value.  This is a Town Board decision.  The equalization rate (Level of Assessment-LOA) for 2013 is 4.35%.  This reflects a very slight drop in overall sales value for 2013.  It should be noted that while most of Onondaga County is at 100% of market value, over 50% of the properties in New York State have equalization rates under 10% of full market value.

To arrive at full market value for your property, divide your asessed value by .0435.  A property assessed at $5,000, divided by .0435 will yield a market value of $114,942 the Equalization rate may change every year based on yearly differences in sales versus the assessments on those sales properties.  The actual rate is set by the New York State Office of Real Property Tax Services.  The assessment roll for 2013-2014 is based on sales data compiled beyween July 1, 2011 and June 30, of 2012.  The July 1, 2012 date is called the Valuation Date and is legislated by New York State property tax law.

The Town of Clay property values on average have risen 2/10ths of 1 percent in the last 5 years, a common trend in the northern suburbs of Onondaga County.  This is a positive re-affirmation that investing in real estate in these areas is a sound investment..

The Town of Clay Assessors’ Office currently processes 22,559 property tax exemptions (up from 21,433 in 2007) on the Town’s 21,000 parcels of property.  All renewal applications are mailed in late October every year for return by March 1st.  Due to the large volume of exemption forms mailed to property owners that require return, review and in many cases necessitate follow-up phone calls, we firmly adhere to the State legislated March 1st exemption deadline for all exemption applications.  As a public service we attempt to call and remind as many people as we can that the exemptions are due, but staffing and time constraints limit our opportunity to reach everyone. Key dates that affect the assessment process are:

The Tentative Assessment roll (link to 2013 Tentative Assessment Roll) is filed on May 1st and may be inspected during regular office hours. Grievance Day is May 28th, 2013, the fourth Tuesday of May from 5:00 PM to 9:00 PM. The Assessor will be in attendance with the roll beyond regular business hours, 8:30 A.M. to 4:30 P.M., at the following days and time.  The dates listed below will be updated for the year 2014 in the month of April:

If you have decided to file for an assessment reduction, you should mail or deliver the complaint form and supporting documentation to your local assessing unit so that it arrives on or before Grievance Day. If you mail the form, even if it is postmarked on or before Grievance Day, it is deemed to be late if it does NOT arrive by Grievance Day. Ideally, the form should arrive at least four business days before Grievance Day. Otherwise, the assessor can obtain an adjournment to have time to prepare a response to your complaint. The reason behind this is that due to the volume of complaints, the forms cannot be reviewed by the Assessor by Grievance Day in preparation for submission to the Board of Assessment Review.