The reassessment of property values might be done in the city next year.

Lisa Volpe, city assessor, told the Jamestown City Council on Monday that she would like to hire a company to perform a property reassessment of the whole city. She said the contract to hire the company would cost $280,000.

Volpe said the city hasn’t done a reassessment in 15 years, with the state requesting that municipalities perform one every four years.

She said the last time the city did a reassessment, the total assessed property value in the city increased 263%. She added that doing a reassessment could lower the city’s tax rate.

“The city could generate an equal amount of tax revenue by decreasing the rate to $22.08 per thousand, which is about $1.61 per hundred thousand, as compared to the current rate of $23.69,” she said.

“If the tax rate remained the current $23.69 and it was applied to the new levy amount of $732 million, the city could generate an additional $1,179,203 of tax revenue.”

Volpe said a house assessed at $70,000 that saw no change in its value could see a tax decrease of $112. She said the equivalence rate in the city is 93%, which contributes to a higher tax rate due to inequity in values.

In other business:

¯ The council also heard from Jennifer Williams, city clerk, who requested $15,000 to purchase a bill pay kiosk for the lobby of the Jamestown Municipal Building. She said the kiosk could be set up for other functions as well.

“You know, for folks, if the office can’t be open, they can run in and pay a parking ticket real quick or pay their BPU bill real quick,” she said. “Those are two items we can’t take credit cards for in the office, so this would give people the capability to, rather than turning them away and sending them off to an ATM, they could step aside and make their payment right there so they don’t forget about their parking ticket.”

¯ Mark Dead, city IT director, requested to add a full-time position to assist the city with cyber security. He said the city had been attacked twice in the last year by hackers. He added the city has purchased software to help with any future attacks, but said another employee would improve the city’s cyber security even more.

“We’ve suffered two attacks, well we didn’t suffer but, we’ve gone through two attacks and spent hours and up all night trying to make sure we weren’t, we didn’t succumb to their attacks,” he said. “But this new position would be a person who would focus on cyber security as well as the servers and a lot more higher-end networking that the city relies on.”

¯ Noah Goodling, Fenton History Center executive director, addressed the council about the funding the city appropriates to the center. He said the Fenton has received $26,000 from the city since 2003, with $16,000 going toward maintenance and $10,000 going to pay the utilities. He added the Fenton’s total budget for next year is $204,000, with 8% of its revenues coming from the city.

¯ The council finished its discussion with department heads during the budget workshop meeting Monday. Kimberly Ecklund, At-Large councilwoman and Finance Committee chairwoman, said that some department heads should be prepared to possibly be questioned again about their proposed budgets. The council’s next meeting is slated for Monday, Nov. 8. The council has a Dec. 1 deadline to pass a spending plan or the executive budget prepared by Jamestown Mayor Eddie Sundquist will be the budget used next year.

Sundquist released the executive budget on Oct. 7, which includes a .8% tax levy increase — a $130,000 hike. According to the state Department of Taxation and Finances, the tax levy is the amount raised through property taxes.

The tax rate proposed by the mayor will remain at $23.69 per $1,000 assessed property value. According to the state Department of Taxation and Finances, the tax rate is determined by dividing the tax levy by the total taxable assessed value of all property in a jurisdiction.