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A PROPOSED FIVE TO SEVEN-YEAR STRATEGY
Property tax equity. What does it mean? Do we have it now? How will we know when we have it? Can you actually achieve property tax equity in New York State? Is it even possible to design a strategy that most New Yorkers would embrace? Could any strategy for achieving and maintaining property tax equity actually be implemented?
These and a host of other of questions were part of the context that faced The Public Strategies Group, Inc.(PSG) as it began to design a strategy for achieving property tax equity.
The Work Plan
Specifically, in February (2000) PSG was commissioned to develop a five to seven-year strategy for achieving and maintaining property tax equity across New York State. The success of designs as complex as this rests, in part, on a clear definition of the design problem. Thus we began our design process by an intense phase of listening to stakeholders from across the state. Seventeen focus groups were held that involved over 150 people ranging from school officials to assessors, from individual taxpayers to County Directors, from local government representatives to mortgage bankers and real estate agents. Meetings and interviews were also held with professional associations, state government officials and the New York Office of Real Property Services (NY-ORPS).
Information from these focus groups, interviews, and meetings was summarized (see the PSG report entitled Common Refrains and Themes ¯ A Review of the Data from Seventeen Focus Groups) and used as input for a "strategy design conference" in which sixty-three representatives from nine different stakeholder groups came together to advise PSG on the definition and the parameters for this design. The objective of this conference was to arrive at an acceptable definition of the problem statement around which the strategy would be designed.
Following the strategy design conference in May, PSG held a "design lab" to draft its recommended strategy for achieving and maintaining property tax equity. Then a second strategy design conference was held, with almost the same sixty-three people in attendance, at which PSG presented its draft strategy. Participants were given an opportunity to critique the strategy, improve on it, and offer implementation advice to the PSG team. At the end of both strategy design conferences, participants were asked to complete a brief evaluation of the two days. The results of these participant evaluations are reported in the appendices.
Over the summer, PSG examined the design in light of the reactions, both positive and negative, it had received. PSG team members also made presentations to the annual meetings of the County Directors and the Assessors. Scheduling conflicts prevented us from having a similar session at the September meeting of the NYS Association of Counties (NYSAC). We also met with the Property Tax Alliance (check official name) and exchanged correspondence with the NY State School Boards Association about the design. This period of presentation and listening was most valuable in refining the design but especially in assisting the consulting team with its implementation recommendations.
During the summer we also built a computer-based knowledge management prototype of the design. The prototype (the first screen of which appears as the cover of this report) is designed to preview the characteristics of an Online Property Tax System that New Yorkers could expect to be using in 2005, if this design were implemented as recommended in this report. With this knowledge management prototype, interested people can sit down at a computer and "experience" the New York real property tax system as if it were 2005 and the new system were actually functioning. It shows how ORPS and other property tax stakeholders might interact in an on-line "dot.com" world. The prototype contains all of the information in this report but brings it to life in a more experiential fashion. A self-installing CD-ROM of the prototype has been given ORPS as part of PSGs final report.
The final phase of this project was the development of implementation recommendations for this design. An overview of the entire projects work plan is presented in the chart below.
Developing A Five to Seven-Year Strategy for Achieving and Maintaining Property Tax Equity
Project Work Plan
Planning and Launch (February-March)
Focus (March-April)
Strategy Design Conference (May 9-10)
Design Lab (May 24-25)
Strategy Design Conference (June 22-23)
Prototype Development (June-July)
Design Revisions (July-September)
Revised Prototype (July-September)
Implementation Recommendations (September-October)
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