May 31—Lackawanna County's first property reassessment in more than 50 years chugs along, with residential data collection continuing in Scranton and the initial batch of notices describing properties due to hit mailboxes in the Downvalley.

Tyler Technologies, the company conducting the real estate revaluation for the county, collected data on 17,683 residential parcels in Taylor, Old Forge, Moosic and parts of Scranton as of May 19, said Patrick Tobin, county director of assessment.

That represents almost 18% of residential properties across the county, Tobin said. Tyler is collecting data only on residential properties; commercial parcels will be done later.

In Scranton, where data collectors started gathering information about individual properties in December, Tyler teams have completed the city's North Scranton section and have shifted their focus to West Scranton, said Chris Gerancher, the company's appraisal project supervisor.

Of the 23,734 residential properties identified in the city, 8,434 have been completed, he said. Overall, the city has just over 27,000 residential and commercial parcels.

"We're coming up on 9,000," Gerancher said. "So that's almost a third of the city."

Assessed property values are the basis for the real estate taxes levied by the county, municipal governments and school districts.

In the decades since the county performed its last comprehensive reassessment in the late 1960s, its assessed values have grown wildly out of kilter, resulting in some property owners paying more than their fair share of taxes and others paying less.

The county commissioners hired Tyler last May for almost $5.2 million to conduct the reassessment and develop updated values for all of the approximately 107,000 properties in the county.

The rule of thumb is, after a reassessment, about a third of individual property tax bills will increase, another third will decrease and the final third will remain about the same.

Tyler started its work in the Downvalley, completing data collection in Taylor, Old Forge and Moosic last summer and fall before moving into Scranton.

Gerancher said residential property owners in Taylor should receive forms, known as data mailers, within the next few weeks asking them to verify the information Tyler has about their properties.

Although Tyler had hoped to start mailing the forms earlier in the spring, Tobin said county officials requested some changes to the mailers. Gerancher said the company also needed to test and check its data.

"There is a big process involved with the printers and everything like that. ... It's a lot of quality assurance stuff that we do before we're submitting the file to the printer to actually send those out," he said.

Each mailer will detail information about the property — owner's name, address, size and age of the home, type of construction, number of bedrooms and baths, outbuildings and any other features that will help determine its value. There will also be a photo of the property.

Gerancher said the form asks the recipient to review the information, fix any inaccuracies and return it within 14 days.

"It's a good opportunity for you to change it if you see anything that's wrong," he said.

After the mailers go out to Taylor, Old Forge and Moosic will follow, he said.

"It will go out batch by batch as we confirm the quality of all the data, test everything and make sure it's accurate, and all of our quality assurance has been done," Gerancher said.

Tobin said he has no complaints about the reassessment project or its pace, pointing out about a quarter of all the properties in the county will be done once Tyler finishes Scranton.

"Overall, I'm very satisfied with the work Tyler is doing," he said.

Gerancher said the outreach the county and Tyler have done about reassessment appears to have been effective as most members of the public who the data collectors encounter in their work seem to be aware of the project and its purpose.

"We are running into very few people who actually have no idea why we are there. ... That's really the most remarkable thing I can say about the project," he said.

Contact the writer: dsingleton@timesshamrock.com; 570-348-9132.

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