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Written by Joanne Wallenstein

Published: 28 May 2014

Created: 28 May 2014

Last Updated: 30 May 2014

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Mayor Steves opened the May 27 by remembering former Village Trustee Sharon Lindsay who passed away at the age of 65 last week. He called her "an amazing force who has contributed mightily to the village. He said, "She worked selflessly with dignity, patience and intelligence." He asked for a moment of silence to remember a "remarkable woman gone much too soon."

Steves reminded listeners about a community meeting with Tyler Technologies on Thursday May 29 at 7:30 where Tyler will discuss the methodology behind the recent revaluation. He said that the meeting would be televised and that those who could not attend could submit questions for Tyler to mayor@scarsdale.com.

He offered thanks to the men and women of the American Legion Post 52 who sponsored the Memorial Day Parade on Monday and called for younger residents to step up to help continue the activities of the veterans.

Public comments brought a litany of complaints against the recent tax revaluation.

Michael Levine of 54 Walworth Avenue said that he is a statistician and credentialed actuary who submitted multiple FOIL requests to the Village and used the information he received to do what became a "big study" of the methodology used by Tyler for the revaluation. He said, "I feel I understand Tyler's process and have a good sense of the issues," but doubted that "there are more than a handful of taxpayers who understand the model." He said the model was at best "goofy," in that it puts a high value on a "relatively obscure element called the grade adjustment." He claimed that the formula hurts small houses and did not account for the number of bathrooms, condition of bathrooms, the presence of air conditioning or garages. He said the comparables used to value homes "cause more distortions than they correct," and said there was a wide variance in the 400 comps used as a basis for the revaluation. He said, "the flaws are comprehensive and hit the whole village," and ended by saying, "I ask the trustees to set up a committee to review fairness and come up with a model for Scarsdale that realtors can support and taxpayers can understand." See his report and model formula here.

Hamden Vinyasa of 66 Mamaroneck Road said he was "A little surprised by the reassessment that took place." He said that he had been trying to sell his house for five years and has failed to get an offer that met the assessed value. He said that the Tyler representative who inspected his home was " impersonal and did not want to communicate with him." He said his assessment had risen 30% in the revaluation though he lives on a busy, noisy street.

William Weinstein of 3 Claremont Road said the revaluation was "out of wack" for smaller homes where the interior square footage was more highly valued than space in larger homes. He also noted that a sum of $681,755 is deducted from every valuation after the model is applied.

David Bunzel, speaking for the Heathcote Association said there are "quite a bit more than a few disgruntled homeowners." He said that the new tax roll would be submitted on May 28 and questioned the purpose of a meeting with Tyler on May 29. He said the requested data had not been provided in a "timely manner"" and that the revaluation relied on a sample size of only 366 homes, or 7% of the homes in the Village for comparables. He also claimed that seven of the variables used in the model were subjective variables, open to interpretation by the assessors, and objected to the fact that "a half acre in Edgewood is worth substantially less than half an acre in Fox Meadow."

He told trustees that the Heathcote Association had posted a petition to delay the revaluation and received "a large number of signatures from people all over the Village including 80 in Fox Meadow and the 40 in our area (the Heathcote Association), saying there is "substantial support from your constituents to defer it and get it right the first time."

Don Dietz of 66 Brewster Road said if the reval is going forward the trustees should create "a mechanism for the village to recover from those who are undervalued and bill those who are under assessed" during the transition period. He called for the trustees to "Put things back to square one."

Josh Frankel of 45 Black Birch Lane took the other view and urged the Board not to "succumb to pressure" to delay the revaluation. He defended Tyler Technologies saying that "In 2012, when RFPs were out for the reassessment, then-Mayor Flisser commented about Tyler Technologies ...  "In the last five years, Tyler has performed revaluations and assessment-related services to approximately 2,500 clients throughout the country, Canada and the U.K. This is the firm that completed the recent revaluation in neighboring Bronxville." Tyler's website claims that they have been "appraising properties for government since 1938." He continued, "Yet only in Scarsdale we are lead to believe that Tyler's methodologies are so flawed that we require a delay." He said that the number of informal meetings held by residents with Tyler met historic norms. He quoted the report from the Scarsdale Forum that said that "many large estate properties were substantially under-assessed and these property owners are enjoying a windfall on the backs of other Scarsdale taxpayers."

In other business, the Board of Trustees passed a resolution to de-map Woodland Road, a paper street that extends from Cushman Road toward Garden Road. The construction of a new subdivision there will include the demolition of two houses – one on Cushman Road and one on Woodland Road and the construction of four houses on Cushman Road by KOS builders. The Board held a hearing on May 13 and no public comments were received.

The Board of Trustees gave Richard and Loretta Rosenbaum of 16 Kensington Road a license for an encroachment onto the Village right of way for a stone walkway that did not follow the approved building plan.

They also approved $42,000 for the Sheldrake Floood Mitigation and Improvement Project, which is 10% of the total estimate cost of $416,496 to clean and remove silt in the open water course fro Cayuga Pond to Canterbury Road, install an open grating culvert, and construct a connector pipe to the open water course on the south side of Canterbury Road to balance flows.

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Written by Joanne Wallenstein

Published: 04 June 2014

Created: 04 June 2014

Last Updated: 09 June 2014

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Even after Tyler Technologies held a meeting to clarify the process behind Scarsdale's village-wide revaluation, questions abound. Greenacres resident, statistician and certified actuary Michael Levine has studied Tyler's model and agreed to explain it to those of us who don't have an advanced degree in statistics. Here are answers to two questions that get to the heart of the matter.

1) What were the key factors that were used in the model – i.e. Which had the most weight?

Before I answer this, let me explain that the "model" fits into a bigger process. My understanding of this process is based on what I have pieced together, plus what Tyler said at the May 29 meeting. My analysis is limited to single family residences. The process basically has four steps

(1) Develop land values based mainly on neighborhood and lot area (acreage), with some adjustment for things like busy streets.

(2) Create the model and calculate model estimates for every property.

(3) For every property, identify five (or sometimes four or three) recently-sold properties as comparable sales ("comps").

(4) Based on the comps, adjust the value (up or down or no change) from the model estimate.

So, now I am explaining item (2). The model is a mathematical formula. A simple example of a model/formula – one that they did not use -- would be

Value = (Area in Square Feet) * (380 per SF) + 350,000.

The "model value" for a 3,000 SF house would = (3,000 * 380) + 350,000 = 1,490,000.

Where would they have gotten the $380 and the $350,000? By looking at recent sales for all of Scarsdale and using a mathematical technique called "ordinary least squares regression". The actual sales would have been at all different "per square footages". The model value will be over for some and under for others, but the theory is that this is the best formula for explaining the sales prices if you limit yourself to formulas that involves a factor per SF and a constant.

Obviously, square footage is not the only thing that should matter. The acreage should obviously matter. There are a whole list of characteristics that a common sense person would think could matter, such as location, number of bathrooms, existence (or not) of central air, age of the property, etc. Some important subjective considerations are

• The quality of construction – materials and workmanship – which is intended to be captured in the "grade" and "grade adjustment" characteristics. Grade is from A (Excellent) to E (Minimum). The Grade Adjustment is a percentage, such that the average for any grade level is 100, and it could up (e.g., to 90) or down (e.g., to 110).

• The quality of maintenance – the amount wear-and-tear and so forth – which is intended to be captured in the "overall condition" characteristic. Overall Condition is from 1 (Poor) to 5 (Excellent)

You can learn more about these definitions by looking at the New York Assessor's Manual, which is posted on the village website.

With many characteristics that could contribute to value, the math of the regression calculation becomes more complicated, but the goal is the same – find a formula that expresses a value as factors applied to characteristics. Also, there is some art in deciding which factors to use.

With this as background, I would say that the Tyler model for Scarsdale – the results of their regression -- heavily uses land value (which basically reflects acreage and neighborhood) and square footage, which make sense. Grade and grade adjustment are also very important. Condition is important, and there are separate square foot measures for finished basements and rec rooms. There is an addition if you have an inground pool.

The Tyler formula does not explicitly include number of bathrooms or bathroom quality or the existence of central air, for example. If you have 3.5 baths in and they incorrectly said 5.5, it would not have had any impact of their model's calculation of your value

I personally think the model is simply too sensitive to the refinements of the grade adjustment, caused by additional mathematical nuances factors that are beyond what I can explain here. I recently saw a case where changing a "B 115%" to a "B 110%" on a smaller-sized housed caused a $60,000 impact. I do not think the real buying market would discern these differences (as compared to number of baths), and this is supposed to be about real market value.

But even if the model can be mathematically justified, my biggest complaint about all of this is that the Scarsdale taxpayers were never, ever informed about the importance of grade/grade adjustment, or even that it would matter at all.

• Back in 2012, the press releases and flyers assured us that, after the physical inspection, "[a] letter detailing the physical attributes collected and to be used in the valuation, referred to as a data mailer, will be sent to you." (emphasis added.) My letter showed things like acreage, square feet, overall condition, and number of bedrooms and told me I should indicate any changes. The letter did not disclose grade/grade adjustment.

• A taxpayer who looked at the Property Inquiry on the village website any time up until a few weeks ago would not have seen grade/grade adjustment.

• The formula was not made public until I figured it out from a FOIL request and submitted it to the Board of Trustees on May 27.

• Thus, a taxpayer trying to contest a valuation in an informal meeting would never have known their own grade/grade adjustment, and would never have known that it mattered.

It is as though your boss gave you your "objectives" for the year, and you agreed to them, and then at bonus time your boss told you that you got a bad bonus because you did not do well on some objective that was important in the bonus calculation but that you had no idea about.

2) How were the neighborhoods of Scarsdale weighted or ranked in terms of land value?

I am interpreting this question as asking about the results – the "ranking" and not the math or theory Tyler went through to do it.

As background, I should note that land value enters the valuation in two different ways. There is the "official" land value that appears on the formal assessment roll along with the total value. That value is then used within the model formula. The model does not just add 100% of this amount. So, a second way you could measure land value is in the sense of how it works through the model, and thus how much it actually ends up adding to your total value. I will call this the "contribution to total" land value.

Tyler's calculation of official land values appears to have been done early on. It seems they ended up developing 14 "neighborhood codes" – two for Greenacres and three each for the other elementary school codes. The village website now has the map that shows the neighborhood codes.

Tyler published formulas for official land values. The results are calculated and presented in this graph, and this shows you the relative ranking of neighborhoods

You will see that there are rally only eight distinct lines or curves, with some neighborhoods sharing the same curves.

I should also note the following.

• These lines are what I call the "primary" curve for each neighborhood. I would say the majority of homes have values on these lines, but there are secondary and tertiary curves within [most] neighborhood – lines that are about $50,000 lower than the primary. These lines will have the houses that are on busy streets, or very close to busy buildings or other factors that reduce value.

• This graph only goes out to one acre. If the graph went out further, you would see the Heathcote 01 (black) line going up more steeply, compared to the others. At 2.0 acres, Heathcote 01 is at $3.6 million and Fox Meadow 01/Greenacres 01 (blue) is at about $2.34 million. Edgewood 01 (a few houses on Taunton Rd) and Quaker Ridge 01 (Brittany Close) would theoretically be in between, but they do not actually have any properties at the larger land sizes.

Now, regarding the "contribution to total" land value. The Tyler model formula includes 98.97% of the official land value, plus or minus an amount that varies by neighborhood, as follows.

In other words, Tyler has concluded on some basis that the official land value is not a perfect indication of a neighborhood's contribution to total value. This slightly shifts the ranking of the neighborhoods, especially at the lower lot sizes. Fox Meadow 01 has the greatest land contribution to value for lot sizes up to 0.61, with Heathcote 01 having the greatest value at larger lot sizes.

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Written by Joanne Wallenstein

Published: 20 May 2014

Created: 20 May 2014

Last Updated: 20 May 2014

Hits: 3703

The Scarsdale Forum Sustainability Committee has submitted a report recommending changes to the Village's fall leaf collection practice to the Mayor and the Village Board of Trustees. The report recommends that residents ask their landscapers to mulch their leaves on site instead of putting them to the curb. Mulching is just leaving leaves where they fall and mowing over them. This finely shreds the leaves which then sink into and feed the soil. The practice of mulching will save residents money on topsoil and fertilizer as the mulched leaves will now be feeding lawns. The report also reveals that the Village spends $800,000 a year on fall leaf collection which could be eliminated if residents mulched... not to mention the pollution created by the trucks that are sent back and forth to upstate NY and CT every day to dispose of the leaves.

As an intermediate step towards mulching the report is asking that the Village require fall leaves to be bagged or containerized starting this fall. The hope is that residents will ask their landscapers to mulch their fall leaves on their lawns rather than putting them to the curb in bags or containers. Even if residents put leaves to the curb in bags there is a still a benefit to the environment and the Village. Bagged leaves tend not to flow into and clog storm drains. It also eliminates the hazard and nuisance of having large piles of leaves spilling onto sidewalks, streets and parking spaces.

The Village estimates that bagged leaves will save $200,00-300,000 a year because they are easier and faster to collect. Ultimately though the report urges residents to view their fall leaves as a precious resource not to be given away. The Sustanability Committee has asked the Village to educate and encourage residents to use their fall leaves to feed their lawns. The report shows that mulching is a big win for all –- it saves residents money on topsoil and fertilizer, makes healthier lawns naturally, saves the Village money and helps the environment. The report asks that the Village take all necessary steps towards these goals.

Read the entire report on the Scarsdale Forum website here: