By David Kilby, Special Writer
SPRINGFIELD — Tough economic times, decreasing property values and numerous tax appeals have led the township to reevaluate its properties.
Springfield plans to begin the project within the next few weeks.
Dennis Bianchini, township tax assessor, gave a report at the Township Council on Jan. 9. He said that Springfield is in the negotiation process with tax reevaluation firms.
The township is being ordered by the county tax board to conduct the tax reevaluation.
Following the order, Springfield leaders have discussed the offers of three reevaluation firms at the meeting.
Appraisal Systems Inc. said it would reevaluate township properties for $123,715, Vital Communications Inc. proposed to do the job for $139,000, and Professional Property Appraisers’ bid was $135,220.
The township chose to go with Professional Property Appraisers with pending negotiations.
The aim is to get PPA to bring the price down, ideally to that of the lowest bidder.
”The assumption is you’ll get a better quality assessment for a better price,” said Dennis McInerney, township attorney.
Since it is a special professional service, the township didn’t have to go with the lowest bidder, Councilman Peter Sobotka said, adding there are only a limited number of firms qualified to reevaluate municipalities.
Mr. Bianchini said there are in fact only nine firms in the state that are state approved to do property tax reevaluations.
In 2011, the average house in Springfield was assessed at $321,000. The tax rate last year was 22.65 cents per $100 of assessed value, an increase of 2 cents from the year before. An owner of a house assessed at the township average of $321,000 paid $727 in municipal taxes in 2011.
”When (a tax reevaluation) was done five or six years ago, there was a lot of inconsistency, and no one knew what to expect,” Mayor Denis McDaniel said while asking Mr. Bianchini what a visit from a property assessor would entail.
Mr. Bianchini said there will be field enumerators who will diagram homes on a tablet and will ask if there’s anything they should know about on the property that would affect the value of the house. He added that a good inspector takes about 15 minutes to do an efficient property value assessment.
If no one is home at the time the enumerator is scheduled to come to a home, the enumerator will call the residence and start evaluating the exterior of the property.
Mr. Bianchini said there will be a crew of approximately three or four separate people evaluating township property. Since commercial and residential properties are evaluated differently, there most likely will be different enumerators for each.
Councilman David Frank requested enumerators submit a background check before being given permission to evaluate township property, and Police Chief Eric Trout said that’s something Springfield can require on a local level.
”If they don’t want to do it, we’ll just say no thank you,” the mayor said.
The council acknowledged many residential properties in Springfield are unique in that they serve as farms and, therefore, have several outlying buildings that will need to be assessed along with the house.
The project will begin within the next few weeks, Mr. Sobotka said. Reevaluations are due to the state by Oct. 1, and the reassessed values from the tax reevaluation will come into effect for taxpayers in the 2014 tax year.

