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MPAC rep apologizes
Councillor Wells warns residents that reassessment could have hefty increases
By LYN TREMBLAY
While it might have been considered a little late, Norfolk County councillors managed to get an apology from a Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC) representative at last week’s meeting. At the end of a presentation Seeli Mathews, Municipal Relations Representative for Brantford, Brant, Haldimand and Norfolk, was grilled as to how the corporation managed to assess a property in Norfolk County at $92.3 million instead of $85,000.
“The information was keyed in wrong,” she stated. “It was just a key stroke, instead of 43,500 square feet, it was keyed in as acres.”
MPAC, which advises municipalities of assessment values (recognized as revenues), did not detect the error before it caused a $1 million headache for councillors and staff during their annual budget meetings.
Ms. Seeli said it would have been caught earlier if the property owner had read the assessment notice.
Councillor Roger Geysens took her to task for blaming the property owner.
“We are sorry, like I said it was a keystroke error,” she stated. “We tried to alert everyone as soon as possible that there was an error. We are going to build checks and balances into the system so this type of error doesn’t occur again.”
In the most recent assessment there were 29,231 properties in Norfolk County with a total assessment value of $5.2 billion. Out of 602 appeals, 268 adjustments were made. The next assessment will be in 2008.
Councillor John Wells warned that some residents, especially those who live along the lake, should expect hefty increases. “I hope that people are aware that in three years they are going to be impacted greatly.”
-- Wednesday, February 28, 2007
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