Platz, New Castle Assessor, Gets Pleasantville Post

New Castle Assessor Philip Platz was appointed Monday to Pleasantville’s equivalent but part-time approach to property assessment.

Platz’ appointment ends a two-month search for a successor to James Timmings, who gave up the part-time village gig in July to focus on his full-time assessor duties with the Town of Mount Pleasant.

Platz took over as the $108,500-a-year New Castle assessor on Jan. 1, 2011. In Pleasantville, he will be paid $3,000 a month as the village’s “per diem” assessor.

While an assessor’s chief duty is to affix a value to each piece of real property in a municipality, the job increasingly today requires defending those assessments against legal challenge.

Homeowners in growing numbers are bringing so-called tax certiorari actions, appeals to a court to reduce the value an assessor has assigned to a piece of property.

At Monday’s work session, for example, the village board voted to return more than $58,000 in taxes collected from a Tompkins Avenue property owner, who had complained of an overly high assessment and filed a certiorari petition.