Norwalk tax assessor: ‘I’m comfortable with reval’

NORWALK, Conn. – If you’re a Norwalk property owner, you can expect to get your new tax notice around Feb. 20, Tax Assessor Michael Stewart said.

Stewart said last week that he is planning to ask Mayor Harry Rilling for a one-month extension for the completion of the revaluation currently under way.

“I think the time is necessary to make sure we get the grand list as clean as possible,” he said, adding that more hearings were scheduled than had originally been planned.

Taxpayers will then have until March 20 to file an appeal, he said.

Stewart said that after the last revaluation, in 2008, there were 1,400 appeals to the Board of Assessment Appeals. There were 170 property tax appeals taken to court. Of those, 40 are remaining, divided evenly between commercial and residential properties.

The typical reduction was in the lower double digits, around 12 to 14 percent, he said. “There were a few exceptions, as high as 30 percent,” he said. “But they are exceptions.”

The revaluation shows about $15.1 billion in market value for Norwalk properties, an assessed value of $10.5 billion, he said.

The values haven’t changed a lot as Norwalk citizens have come in for hearings, he said.

“We recognize that there are a group of properties, we’ll call them outliers, at this point that are either changed more than we anticipated or that are up or down,” he said.

But, “We are fairly comfortable with the overall values,” he said.