Lackawanna County mailed Friday assessed valuations for all 102,685 properties countywide, giving owners more than a month to file formal appeals if they disagree with their new assessed property values.
The newly mailed figures will reflect potential adjustments made during an informal review process that saw thousands of property owners question tentative values calculated as part of the county’s ongoing, controversial and long-overdue reassessment. For the majority of property owners, however, the figures should mirror the tentative property valuations they already received in March, county assessment Director Patrick Tobin said.
Reassessment is designed to bring assessed property values — what municipalities, counties and school districts use to calculate property tax bills — in line with those properties’ fair market values. The aim of the county’s reassessment is to restore tax fairness and fix a system that became wildly skewed since 1968, when the county last reassessed, resulting in disparate taxes on similar properties.
Those who believe their new assessed values are too high, exceeding their property’s fair market value, can file a formal appeal until 4 p.m. on Aug. 1. The appeal fee is $35 per parcel; residential and commercial assessment appeals applications are available online at lackawannacounty.org.
The website also includes a database posted Friday of new valuations calculated during the reassessment. Those valuations won’t be certified until after all formal appeals are heard in August, September and October.
The county’s permanent assessment appeals board and four temporary boards that commissioners recently filled will hear appeals in space the county is leasing at the Marketplace at Steamtown in downtown Scranton. Property owners can file a formal appeal even if they didn’t participate in the informal review process.
County officials plan to certify final reassessed property valuations Nov. 14, enabling the county, municipalities and school districts to use the certified figures to calculate 2026 tax bills.
Property owners should not apply their new values to current tax rates, as the result will be inflated and inaccurate.
Reassessment must by law be essentially revenue-neutral. As properties are assigned higher assessments reflecting their current market values, tax rates must come down so governments collect about the same amount of revenue after reassessment as they did before.
A general rule of thumb is that about a third of property owners pay higher tax bills after reassessment, another third bear less of a property tax burden and bills for the final third stay roughly the same.