Cuyahoga County has sent out letters telling more than 22,000 property owners that they won their informal appeal to have their new property tax reassessments reduced.
Until the letters arrive, it's still not clear how big a break these homeowners will get, and what real impact it will have on their property tax bills.
Cleveland Tremont resident Melody Perry told News 5 she's cautiously optimistic about the reduction but said she's concerned that if the county is willing to admit it made a mistake on 22,593 property reassessments, how many of the other 480,000 parcels did it get wrong countywide.
"Oh no this is not over, not at all, this has got to be looked into," Perry said.
"There needs to be somebody looking into the system, and it's broke, it needs to be fixed. I don't know how they can explain the numbers."
Perry said she was disappointed to learn only seven percent of Cuyahoga County property owners filed an informal appeal to fight their reassessments, and she is hoping more residents will file formal appeals starting on Jan. 1.
"There's not enough people coming out," Perry said.
"I mean for the two extra weeks we got, I wish that we would have had more people show up."
Lincoln Heights Block Club leader Henry Senyak agrees the county needs to take a closer look at the system it uses when calculating property tax reassessments.
"They were using wrong information, they were using houses that were rehabbed against houses that weren't rehabbed," Senyak said.
Senyak said homeowners won't know the real impact of the county re-appraisal process until the actual tax bills arrive in the mail during the third week of December.
Senyak said it's important homeowners prepare thoroughly for the formal appeal process with the Board of Revision, which starts on Jan. 1 and runs through March 31.
"What if they're only cutting their property down 10 percent and they're still on the hook, and instead of 200 percent it's 150 percent increase, Senyak asked.
"It's still going to force people out of this part of Tremont."
"When the actual tax bills come in towards Christmas, they're going to get, and it's going to be like the Grinch came, trust me."
