Miriam Cortez’s forehead is coated with ashes in the shape of a cross outside Rochester’s City Hall. It’s Ash Wednesday, and the city’s preliminary property reassessments have the senior citizen stressed.
She worried about a tax increase and how she’d afford food and medicine.
“It is a city government overreach,” said Clay Harris, founder of Uniting and Healing through Hope of Monroe County.
Harris organized the press conference on a sunny Wednesday afternoon. “We’re here today to shine a brighter light like the sun is shining today, on this injustice for this reassessment,” he said.
Since the 1980s, Rochester has reassessed property values every four years.
“It’s a good time period to really capture the market activity,” city assessor Mike Zazzara said.
The assessments are based on the real estate market. 2024’s reassessments saw property values increase in every one of Rochester’s 132 neighborhoods, and some residents were stunned at the numbers. Initial evaluations of residential properties increased by an average of 68.4%, contributing $3.2 billion to the city’s tax revenue.