City Revaluation May Be Late

City assessors may not finish their long-running effort to revalue property in Cambridge before the end of fiscal year 1983 in June, officials said yesterday, and the project's extension could result in a $10 million revenue loss in fiscal year 1984.

But at last night's Cambridge City Council meeting, councilors examined the problem of reassessing the value of Cambridge's buildings, and offered suggestions to speed up the process.

Councilor Francis H. Duchay '55 suggested that personnel from other city departments help the assessors for the next three months to insure that the revaluation be completed by June 30, the end of the present fiscal year.

The delay has already forced the city to borrow money until it can collect its spring tax bills.

City Manager Robert W. Healy attributed the problem to Cambridge's complexity. He said the mix of residential and commercial buildings and the lack of undeveloped land to be sold made it difficult to determine accurately the value of the land.

He added that the state Department of Revenue also delayed the process by refusing to accept Cambridge's calculations of the value of some-commercial buildings until the city further justified its figures.

City officials have already called in an outside assessing consultant, R.M. Bradley & Co., to help complete the revaluation by its deadline.

"We're making progress daily and weekly," Kevin T. McDevitt, one of the city's three assessors, said yesterday, but he added that the consultant needs more time.

Proposition 2 1/2, the property tax-cutting measure passed in November, 1980 which restricts taxation to 2 1/2 percent of the value of the property, was one of the causes of the revaluation. In the past, Cambridge has had an average tax rate of 20 percent.

"The tax rate is driven down, so the value has to be driven up," McDevitt explained.