County officials are turning to a chief rival of reassessment contractor Sabre Systems and Service to help set property values next year and are scrapping the computer software used by Sabre to calculate assessments.

The county has awarded a $175,000 contract to Cole Layer Trumble Co. of Dayton, Ohio, to help the Office of Property Assessment in validating property sales from 1998 through part of 2001 and in redrawing some neighborhood boundaries, both key elements in determining values for 2002.

As part of the contract, Cole Layer Trumble will supply the county with new computer software to replace that installed by Sabre last year in calculating values in the controversial reassessment.

The software is important because it evaluates property characteristics, neighborhoods, sales and other factors in order to arrive at a value for a house.

County Manager Bob Webb said one big advantage of the new program is that it will give homeowners more precise examples of the comparable properties used in determining real estate values.

The switch is aimed at addressing one of the chief criticisms of the reassessment -- that the properties selected for comparison and available over the county's assessment Web site were not comparable at all and in some cases were blocks, neighborhoods or even municipalities away.

Webb said the Sabre comparables were intended to be more general in nature. The new software, on the other hand, is expected to produce the exact comparables used in setting values, Cole Layer Trumble President and CEO Bruce Nagel said.

"When I look at how the values were calculated as part of the previous reappraisal, I don't see values derived from comparables. I see comparables used as a way to justify the value calculated another way," he said.

"We knew the comparables were coming under fire. The county didn't say they thought there was anything bad per se. They just thought they had to do a lot better."

Nagel said the firm's software program, which uses multiple regression analysis, is up to the task. He said it had won competitions sponsored by the International Association of Assessing Officers for several straight years.

While the more precise comparables were not the sole reason for making the switch, they were "in large measure the single greatest factor" in reaching the decision, Webb said.

"I believe this system is a more preferable one," he said.

He added the new software also should give the county the ability to run all assessment-related data on one computer system. To date, the county has been running two parallel systems -- one county system and one Sabre system.

Webb said the decision to hire Cole Layer Trumble was not a sign that the county lacked confidence in Sabre or the accuracy of the $23.9 million reassessment, which has been the subject of lawsuits, nearly 90,000 appeals, and a chorus of complaints from politicians and property owners.

He said much of the criticism was not fact-based. "A lot of what was done in the [Sabre] contract had value."

Webb said Sabre's property information and sales validations will continue to serve as the backbone of the county's assessment system.

"This is in no way, shape or form doing the contract over," he said.

But he added officials believe the Cole Layer Trumble software will fit the county's needs better in the future.

County Councilman Wayne Fontana, a Sabre critic who chairs the county's property assessment oversight board, said he was happy to hear that the company had been hired to assist in setting values next year.

"I think it's a great move. Find me 10 people in this county that would want Sabre to come in and do anything for Allegheny County," he said.

Webb said the county hopes eventually to do all its own assessment work. But he said that was virtually impossible for 2002 because many assessors were still tied up with appeals stemming from the reassessment.

Under its contract, Cole Layer Trumble will utilize county employees in helping to validate sales, redefine neighborhoods, and perform other tasks. It also will train county employees to do those jobs in the future. The two are to work closely so that county assessors will be able to defend 2002 values at appeal hearings.

Webb said he doesn't envision big changes in neighborhood boundaries for next year. Depending on the neighborhood, property values can vary wildly. The boundaries were drawn up by Sabre as part of the reassessment and will remain "largely intact," he said.

The county would like to be able to put all assessment-related information on a unified computer system by 2003, Webb said. Running two systems is making it difficult and costly to produce reports and to do analysis.

Sabre Systems and Cole Layer Trumble were among the firms that competed for the reassessment contract awarded by the former county commissioners in 1997. After losing out on that contract, the company finds itself back in the picture. Nagel refused to take shots at his competitor.

"Whether it's Sabre or CLT, we're both interested in making sure the art of mass appraisal is held in high regard," he said. "They accomplished a very large project in a very short time frame. I'm not going to second-guess anything they did."

Post-Gazette

-- Anonymous, August 29, 2001