Crawford County must complete a countywide reassessment of property values by April 30, 2030, with the new assessments effective for the 2030-31 tax year, according to a court decision filed in Crawford County Court of Common Pleas.

The county must also provide the court with a comprehensive plan to complete the reassessment by Dec. 15, under the order from Senior Judge Oliver J. Lobaugh of Venango County, who presided over a two-day July trial in the lawsuit filed by the city of Meadville.

Lobaugh’s 34-page findings of fact and conclusions of law sided entirely with the city, declaring the county’s outdated assessment values unconstitutionally nonuniform.

“The current assessment roll has become untethered from a reasonably consistent relationship with present market values,” Lobaugh wrote. “The resulting disparities are extraordinary, pervasive across municipalities and property classes, and regressive against lower-value properties.”

The city sued to force the county’s first comprehensive reassessment since 1969. In 1985, the county updated values by applying a flat multiplier of 2.7 across the board, but no actual assessment was conducted. The county’s assessments cover about 61,000 parcels. Of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties, only Franklin County, which last assessed in 1961, uses older values.

Lobaugh’s decision laid out how the disparities fall. Properties in the lowest 10 percent of the county’s residential values are assessed about 63 percent higher relative to market value than properties in the top 10 percent. Mobile homes that sold for around $25,000 were often overassessed by $40,000 to more than $100,000, while the owners of the parks where those homes sit were under-assessed by hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars — two cases by $1.9 million and $2.1 million. Recent sales in Meadville’s Edgewood and Shadow Oaks subdivisions were underassessed by about 30 percent on average; waterfront homes along Conneaut Lake were underassessed by an average of 60 percent.

The county, Lobaugh wrote, “presented no testimony during trial refuting or even calling into question the conclusions from the City’s experts,” and “rested (its case) without offering any evidence or calling any witnesses.”

Attorney Tim Wachter announced the victory to Meadville City Council members during their meeting Tuesday evening. “The evidence showed, and the court agreed, that lower-value homes were assessed at substantially higher rates relative to market value than higher-value homes,” Wachter said. “That means working families and owners of modest homes in the City of Meadville have effectively been subsidizing the tax burden of more valuable properties throughout the county. The city brought this case because every taxpayer deserves to be treated fairly, and we are pleased the court has ordered a countywide reassessment to restore constitutional uniformity and fairness to the system.”

As Wachter concluded, council member Autumn Vogel pumped her fist in affirmation while Mayor Jaime Kinder said, “That is good news — good news to Meadville.”

The county has until Nov. 15 to file an appeal. Eric Henry, who chairs the county Board of Commissioners and testified as a witness in the trial, said in a phone interview Tuesday evening that county officials plan to meet with their lawyers later this week to discuss next steps.

“I think every discussion is on the table,” Henry said. “Nothing’s off the table.”

Recent estimates put the cost of the reassessment at “$6 million and up,” Henry said, with additional costs expected from the appeals that would likely follow. Henry said he did not know how much the county had in reserve. After the July trial, Henry posted a statement attributed to the Board of Commissioners and the county’s chief assessor saying the county would use reserve funds to pay for an assessment if one were required, and that “there will be no property tax increase required to pay for the process itself.”

A reassessment will not produce a windfall for the county, the city or other taxing bodies, because the process is revenue-neutral: as assessments dating to 1969 are adjusted upward, millage rates must come down by a corresponding amount. “It does not mean that the city, the county or the school district will be able to receive more in taxes,” Wachter said. “This is not a tax grab in any way.”

Two neighboring counties reassessed without a court fight. Warren County paid $1.7 million in 2022 to reassess its roughly 28,500 parcels for the first time since 1989, cutting its millage rate from 25 mills to 3.26 mills to keep the result revenue-neutral. Mercer County approved a $3.8 million bid in 2023 to reassess its 60,500 parcels for the first time since 1971; the process ultimately cost about $4.5 million.

By the Conneaut Valley Post