The Town of Athens has finally decided, after several years of back and forth, to do what the state wants all our municipalities to do, but few have the political courage to actually conduct a town wide revaluation of its tax assessments to get everyone on the same fair scale. And according to the story in the Daily Mail story by Melanie Lekocevic, this was after the same town board declined to vote on the same motion several weeks ago. The resolution last Monday, Feb. 14 was adopted by a 4-1 margin, with only Town Councilwoman April Paluch dissenting. The way the reval will occur is that most of Athens' commercial properties will be assessed by an outside firm, while residential properties would be reassessed by the town's assessor.

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Town officials stressed that a reval would not change the amount of taxes that are collected, but would ensure each property owner is paying their fair share, and hopefully eliminate worries about "welcome stranger" practices that see newcomers paying more of the local tax load than longtime residents. One caveat, though: it was stressed at the meeting on Feb. 16 that the resolution for a reval would not obligate the town to actually perform the revaluation, or to pay any particular fee to do so. The idea was to make it possible to put the job out to bid, with proposals now due to the town at the end of March. Which just goes to show how worrying revals still seem to everyone and in particular those who might surmise that what they're paying now isn't what they really should be paying.