Revaluation mailers are back: what happens between now and the 2027 roll

Webster property owners have had a form sitting in a kitchen drawer since early June: a Property Inventory sheet listing the acreage, square footage, age, and condition the town has on file for their home or land, with a request to flag anything that's wrong. It's the first public-facing step in the town's 2027 townwide revaluation, and the correction window is closing soon. The town has said corrections are due by August 1, a date that comes from Supervisor Alex Scialdone's June column rather than the mailer itself (more on that below).

This piece walks through what the mailer is, how to correct it, and what happens next, all the way to the tax bill that will eventually reflect it.

What the mailer actually is

The Assessor's Office, working with consultant KLW Municipal, Inc. of Buffalo, mailed Property Inventory forms to Webster's roughly 17,000 property owners in early June as the start of Phase 1 (Data Analysis) of the town's three-phase 2027 Townwide Revaluation Project. The form asks owners to check the physical details the town has on record and report discrepancies before the town moves into valuation work. The idea is straightforward: an accurate inventory produces a more accurate assessed value later. Webster's last townwide revaluation was in 2004.

The cover letter mixup

Some of the early-June mailings went out with the inventory form but without the cover letter that was supposed to explain what to do with it. The town posted a corrected letter, which opens by apologizing for the confusion and explaining that the letter was meant to accompany the form all along. One detail worth noting for anyone trying to nail down a deadline: the corrected letter itself lists the correction channels and the meeting schedule, but it does not state a return-by date. The August 1 date comes only from the Supervisor's June 10 column, not from the letter residents actually received.

How to correct your form: three channels

The corrected letter lays out three ways to submit a change:

• Online: go to websterny.gov/77/Assessment-Office, choose "Verify Property Data," search your property in the town's Beacon portal, and use the Feedback Form button in the lower left to submit a correction.
• Email: scan your marked-up form and send it to Webster@klwgroup.com.
• In person or by mail: drop it at the Assessor's Office at Town Hall, 1000 Ridge Road (there's a drop box in the vestibule after hours), or mail it to the same address.

The town also held five informational sessions this summer: three in mid-June led by KLW's Robert Koszarek, plus two additional sessions on June 23 that were added specifically because some of the original mailings had gone out without that cover letter. All five have already happened, so this is a matter of record for anyone who missed them rather than something still on the calendar.

What "redistributes, not raises" means, and what it doesn't

The town's standing message on this project is that reassessment does not raise the property tax levy, it redistributes it. That line is accurate for the town as a whole: reassessment does not let the town collect more money in total. It does not mean every household's bill stays flat.

Here's the distinction. The total levy is fixed by the town's budget process, separate from reassessment. What reassessment changes is each property's share of that total, based on how its assessed value moved relative to the townwide average. A property that appreciated faster than the town average will end up carrying a larger share of the levy after reassessment. One that appreciated more slowly, or lost value, will carry a smaller share. Then-Supervisor Tom Flaherty described the mechanism this way when the project launched in July 2025: assessed values would likely roughly double townwide, he said, while the tax rate per $1,000 of assessed value would be cut by about half, an average effect that leaves the typical tax bill close to unchanged. That describes the average case, not a guarantee for every owner. Whether your share goes up or down depends on your property specifically, not the townwide total.

It's also worth separating this from a second, unrelated source of change: a given tax bill can move from year to year because of ordinary budget and levy decisions (town, school, county) that have nothing to do with reassessment. Reassessment affects how the existing levy is split up among properties; it doesn't determine whether the levy itself grows in a given year.

What happens next, through the 2027 roll

Per the town's own project materials, the corrections window now underway is followed by several more months of work before any new value reaches a tax bill:

• Through the rest of 2026, the town and KLW move into sales and market data analysis, then valuation and valuation review.
• Full disclosure notices, showing each property's new assessed value and an estimated tax impact, are expected to mail in early 2027. Per the town's most recent published timeline, that falls in the February to March 2027 window.
• Owners get at least two opportunities to ask questions about their new value before formal Grievance Day, including informal by-appointment meetings with KLW staff. Per that same timeline, those sessions also fall in the February to March 2027 window.
• The Tentative Assessment Roll is expected to be filed May 1, 2027, with formal Grievance Day following on May 25, 2027 (the fourth Tuesday of May, consistent with the town's standard annual assessment calendar rather than an exception to it).
• The Final Assessment Roll is expected July 1, 2027.
• Any change from the revaluation first shows up on the September 2027 school tax bill and the bills that follow.

Those month-specific 2027 dates come from KLW's 2025 planning presentation to the Town Board, the most recent published timeline available. The near-term facts, the early-2027 disclosure mailing and the September 2027 tax bill, are confirmed independently in the town's own Revaluation Fact Sheet.

Where to go for more

The town's project page is websterny.gov/874/2027-Townwide-Revaluation-Project, with the Data Mailers page at websterny.gov/945/Data-Mailers. Questions can go to reval@websterny.gov or 585-412-2320.

AI tools were used in drafting and research.