WAWARSING – It's been in the works for several years, and properties were visited or scanned from the roadside last year. Letters went out to homeowners seeking information on changes to their properties. It wasn't supposed to be a surprise.

Nevertheless, the impact of the new assessment valuations of properties in Wawarsing and Ellenville has been one of shock and dismay, by and large, since notices started arriving in local mailboxes earlier this week.

In the broadest terms, the previous valuation of the entire town ran to about $1 billion. How that valuation was arrived at is unknown. The new valuation is around $1.2 billion. Subtract the $400 million valuation of the New York City-owned reservoir and the suggestion is that the valuation of everything else went up from $600 million to $800 million, or around 33 percent.

Many homeowners are seeing much higher increases than that.

Tom Moza, who owns a 2,700 square foot home on six acres in Ulster Heights, is one of those.

"I had done six improvements to my property since I bought it. I got the building permits each time and my taxes went up every time, too," he said. "My assessment was $255,000 last year, and now it's been set at $414,000."

According to Mike Sommer, assessor for the Town of Wawarsing, the new assessments were made by using sales of comparable properties and doing a mass appraisal on what has sold and what similar properties would sell for.

Moza is puzzled by that information.

"Nothing even comes remotely close to this in any sales in my general vicinity here in Ulster Heights," he said.

Studying the tax map with the new numbers, it seems that commercial properties in Ellenville have seen their assessments lowered, reflecting the current business climate, while residential properties, both in Ellenville and in Wawarsing, have tended to rise.

Mike Maxwell of Maxwell Appraisal, who were hired to do the first reval for the town and village in anyone's memory, is seeing homeowners by appointment on the third floor of the Ellenville Government Center (NOT the Wawarsing town hall) to go over the new assessments and hear comments.

"All property owners should have their new assessments by the end of the week," he said. "There's also a toll free number to call to discuss and review the assessment. You can set up an appointment, too. Next week there'll be three people here to do the reviews."

A final determination on all properties must be made in May.

Maxwell noted that in the past the "assessor was working in a void. Nobody has been able to give me a date when there was an evaluation of the town."

The primary reason for the revaluation, and the sticker shock hitting home this week, has been the lack of a valuation for Wawarsing and Ellenville for a very long time, possibly not since the 1890s and certainly not since World War II. Thus the previous valuations were often the result of a lot of guesswork combined with some data from property sales of comparable houses and lands here and elsewhere.

We'll have more on all of this, including a good look at all the data, the disparities and what can be done about it, in our coming issues.