The City of New York is revamping its assessment functions as it prepares for release of the 2004/2005 assessment roll on January 15, 2004 .

Individual assessors will no longer be responsible for making all the assessments in a particular district. Instead, teams will assess specific types of property, applying the same criteria citywide. Reacting to the recent bribery scandal, access to all assessors will be severely limited. Taxpayers with specific information regarding their property are no longer permitted to schedule meetings with the local district assessor. Instead, they must mail the information to the chief assessor with copies to other senior finance department officials who will monitor the integrity of the process.

A personal review of assessments by taxpayers or their representatives with the finance department will not be encouraged. Only a formal assessment-review challenge with the New York City Tax Commission can be made, and March 1, 2004 is the deadline for this.