City Opts to Delay Tax Reassessment

After weeks of uncertainty over the city's property tax bills, Cambridge officials have decided to seek state permission to delay the city's 100 per cent property reassessment for one year.

Acting city manager Robert Healy, who had hoped to complete the state-mandated revaluation this year, said yesterday it was "extremely" unlikely that the city would have been able to meet the state's February 1 deadline for completing the property review.

Cambridge assessors had during the past several weeks been seeking state approval for their "tax estimate" plan, which was based on concluding the revaluation by February. But state department of revenue officials have so far refused to approve the complicated procedure, and ordered the city to stop collecting property taxes according to a set of tax estimates mailed last month.

"I came to the conclusion that if we rushed there would be more problems than if we waited one more year," Healy said of the four-year-old property revaluation.

The postponement of the 100 per cent assessment is good news for owners of the city's older housing stock, typically elderly and low income families, whose tax bills are expected to soar under the new property values.

State officials have in the past few weeks raised concern about several parts of the city's ongoing revaluation effort, especially what they perceive as an inconsistency in land values across the city. "We will never gain state permission unless I can convince them that every bit of our data is correct," Healy told the city council last night.

State officials said yesterday they are waiting for a "work plan" from Cambridge assessors showing how the revaluation process will be completed with the one year delay before they allow the city to calculate this year's tax bills based on existing values.

Healy said that the work plan would be completed sometime this week, and asked the council to approve an additional budget expenditure that would be used to fund salary increases for city workers that he is now negotiating. Healy told the council, which approved the supplementary expenditure totalling $2.5 million, that the state could not calculate a new tax rate without including the extra employee benefits.

Local 195, the largest city workers' union which represents public works, clerical, and non-professional hospital personnel, has accepted the city's offer of an across-the-board $1000 increase, effective last July 1, and the police officers' union has ratified a 6.1-percent wage increase. Healy said.

The city is continuing to negotiate with the firefighters' union, as well as several smaller labor organizations.

The salary increases will necessarily mean more lay-offs of city workers, in addition to those mandated by the second vear effects of Proposition 2 1/2. Healy said that union officals are aware of the need for an as yet undetermined number of lay-offs, but that they have nevertheless requested the salary raises.