Formal appeal hearings on Lackawanna County's countywide reassessment began August 4 and run through October, one of the final steps in a project begun in 2022. New assessments certify November 14 and take effect for the following tax year. The structural problem for commercial owners is sequencing: county, municipal, and school rates fall as assessed values rise to keep the reassessment revenue-neutral for taxing bodies, but those rates are not set until after certification, so an owner appeals a value without knowing the multiplier that will be applied to it. The general rule of thumb after a reassessment is that roughly a third of properties go up, a third go down, and a third stay about the same. That distribution is useless at the individual parcel level, which is why the appeal is decided on the property's own evidence and not on the county's aggregate.

Watch: The rates set after November 14 certification, and the volume of appeals filed against a six-decade-old baseline.

Source: Lackawanna County reassessment records and local reporting