Riverview School District Expected to Have Preliminary County Reassessment Figures by December

Riverview officials are expecting to know how a county-mandated property reassessment will affect next school year's budget.

On Monday, district solicitor Pat Clair said Allegheny County Judge Stanton Wettick ruled last week that officials must release preliminary reassessment numbers to districts in six area models—Oakmont and Verona are included in those models—by Dec. 1. Certified numbers are expected to be released in January.

Clair said the whole process has been a debacle. County officials had been ordered to complete reassessments by January 2011, but they fell behind.

District officials had been concerned because a tentative release date of April 1, 2012 originally had been released. Property owners then would have been given about a month to review the values before the district received them.

That situation would put the district at a disadvantage because school officials wouldn't have known where they stood in terms of real estate tax figures. District officials must decide by Jan. 6 if they are going to apply for exceptions or seek a referendum vote to raise taxes more than the allowed state index.

Clair also urged officials to keep tabs on the process.

"It's going to have a lot of impact on the budgeting sequence," he said.

Board member John Hackworth said if the district does, indeed, receive the preliminary figures, making budgetary decisions in time to meet state deadlines would be doable because officials usually have to work with uncertainties anyway.