Do new assessments signal better days?

The latest assessed property values in Charlottesville and Albemarle County, released Monday, signal that the downward slope of the local economy might soon flatten, local officials believe.

In Charlottesville, the total value of taxable property, including new construction, increased .63 percent compared with last year. Albemarle County, which does not include new construction in its statistics, saw a 1.24 percent decline.

Excluding new construction, the total value of taxable property in the city declined 0.36 percent.

Residential property values in the city declined 0.14 percent, excluding new construction. The county’s residential property values decreased 1.72 percent.

“I think that compared to what we have seen for the last year or two, we would consider this to be, hopefully, a stabilization,” Albemarle spokeswoman Lee Catlin said. “It’s certainly a less dramatic impact than what we’ve seen for the last couple of years, and it’s pretty much in line with what we were expecting.”

Albemarle’s assessed property values declined 3.18 percent last year compared with a year prior. The city’s property values dropped .76 percent last year.

Roosevelt W. Barbour Jr., Charlottesville’s assessor, said this year’s increase in assessed property values comes as positive news.

“We’re in a lot better situation than a lot of other cities and counties,” Barbour said.

Bernard Wray, the city’s director of finance, projects that this year’s assessments will pump in an additional $300,000 to $400,000, assuming the real-estate tax rate remains unchanged at 95 cents per $100 assessed value.

If Albemarle’s tax rates remain unchanged — the real estate tax rate stands at 74.2 cents per $100 assessed value — the county is projected to collect about $1.2 million less in real-estate taxes this year than last. That figure includes land-use tax deferrals but does not include an estimate for new construction values.

Though officials in Charlottesville and Albemarle are encouraged by the assessments, some uncertainty remains.

“There’s still some uncertainty about exactly how quickly a recovery will take hold,” Catlin said.

City and county assessment information is expected to soon be mailed to property owners, who can contest the assessed value of their property if they feel cheated.

Also Monday, Albemarle gave Charlottesville $18.4 million for its annual revenue-sharing payment, according to Catlin.

In the early 1980s, Albemarle supervisors struck a deal with the city to pay a portion of the county’s revenue to the city in exchange for the city not annexing valuable county land. Though the state soon thereafter barred cities from annexing counties’ land, Albemarle has been stuck in the deal, forced to pay money based on a complicated wealth formula.

On the upside for Albemarle, its payout to Charlottesville is projected to drop to $18.1 million next year — reflecting the economic downturn — the first decline since the 1980s. In 2013, the payout is projected to be $17.6 million.