Editor's note: This third and final part of a three-part series looks at how the four dozen ongoing property assessment appeals in Butler County could impact the county's budgeting and planning process, and what the sheer number of appeals could indicate for Butler's future.The biggest source of income for Butler County's general fund budget — which pays for the prison, court administration and children and youth services, among other items — is, by far, the revenue from real estate taxes.In fact, of the roughly $69.8 million in 2021 general fund revenue, $50.7 million — about 72.6% — comes from property taxes.Although the 48 properties for which the valuation is under appeal represents just 1.1% of the county's total real estate tax revenue, the number of appeals itself represents a larger theme that commissioners chairwoman Leslie Osche said has been a source of contention for some time: Butler's anachronistic assessments.

Of the five highest-valued properties for which the assessment has been appealed, four are in Cranberry Township, as was covered in the first part of this series.However, the third-highest-valued appealed property in the county is Medrad Inc. in Clinton Township, with an assessed value of $1.16 million, or a roughly $13.49 million fair market value.Along with Medrad, the Fairfield Inn in Slippery Rock Borough, at $7 million in fair-market value; the Renaissance Court in Saxonburg, with a fair-market value of $5.7 million; Transitions Healthcare Autumn Grove in Harrisville, assessed at a fair-market rate of $5.5 million; and First Commonwealth Bank in Buffalo Township, at $1.29 million in fair-market value, round out the five highest-valued properties with an appealed assessment in the county outside the Butler and Cranberry areas.In sum, the 48 property assessments under appeal add up to roughly $234.8 million in fair market value based on the 2020 common level ratio factor — a number created by the state to equate county assessments and actual value — or $20.2 million in assessed value.With the county's 27.626-mill tax rate, all 48 sites would contribute about $560,000 to the Butler County coffers, assuming no change in their assessed values.“Considering you have a general fund budget somewhere in the range of $60 (million) to $70 million, by the time they settle those — no one's going to win 100% — you have an impact on something, but not as tremendous as one might think,” Osche said.In fact, the commissioner said, any revenue loss the county experiences as a result of the appeals likely won't be apparent due to the county's unique stance in Western Pennsylvania.“None of that accounts for new growth and newly assessed properties,” Osche said. “We're still seeing tremendous growth.”That growth, and the housing market boom accompanying the growth, has provided Butler County with a slew of higher-valued properties that might make up for others that are under-valued.And that gets to the heart of another county oddity: Those common-level ratio factors. They are not assigned to the county because its assessor under-values every property by a factor of 10, but rather because the county hasn't undertook a countywide assessment in more than 50 years.“I don't think it's really any secret that Butler County is, if not the oldest, then next to the oldest in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania in doing a countywide reassessment,” Osche said.

Osche said some have expressed concern over the current property-valuation process, which assigns values to properties based on 1969 numbers. That was the year in which Butler County last undertook a countywide reassessment.“Right now, some have raised a concern there are a lot of appeals,” she said. “Then you have to see there are a lot of hotels. Take them out of the mix and ask yourself, 'Are there a lot of appeals, or is it just the circumstances related to the pandemic?'”In the end, she added, the purpose of appeals and a reassessment is the same.“The point of it is not to go out and make money,” Osche said. “The point of it is to make fair everyone's assessments, equalize the assessments and bring them into the current market.”How would a countywide reassessment make the assessments fair? Osche said it has to do with the intricacies of when and how assessors value a property.“Some people's property may have been reevaluated over time, and others' might not have been,” she said. “If they haven't made any changes or sold their property, it may not have been looked at since the '60s.”A countywide reassessment, Osche said, is something she has thought about, given the court-ordered reassessment in neighboring Beaver County, as well as other counties in Pennsylvania told by a court they had to assess their properties for the first time in decades.She's thought about it, but it certainly isn't the first thing on her mind.“Everyone's million-dollar question is, 'Are you going to reassess?'” Osche said. “Right now, that's not our intent. When you have the instability right now with all the things that have occurred, it's not the thing that anyone really wants to think about.”

But behind the scenes, Osche said, the county has slowly been preparing for an assessment in the future. She said the judicially mandated reassessments in other counties has made the commissioners aware of that possibility.Such preparations aren't extreme. Instead, it's been transitioning from the pencil-and-paper tax cards to more modern solutions and bringing other systems “as up-to-date as possible.”“It's very expensive, particularly if you don't have good software and up-to-date records,” Osche said.Expanding on her earlier statement that the county's goal wouldn't be to make more money from a reassessment, Osche said she has typically seen, during reassessments, three types of properties: Those for which the values go up, those that go down and those that stay the same. Roughly an even number of properties would be in each category, she said.Osche reiterated the county has no immediate plans to reassess Butler properties, particularly, she added, “when there's so much uncertainty in the market” and when housing prices continue to skyrocket.But time marches on.“There are so many ways to look at this, but you know that somewhere, at some point, it will happen,” Osche said. “The question, really, is when.”