The 2025 reassessment appeal board did what the statute asked it to do. Owners challenged new assessed values. Most hearings ended with a reduction. Across decided cases, the post-hearing numbers are about $713 million lower than the pre-hearing ones — the figure on our 2025 appeals dashboard.

That number is easy to misread.

It is not $713 million of tax. It is not $713 million the county “lost” in a vault. Assessed value is the base millage is applied to. The cash question is: at 2026 millage, how much levy sat on the value that came off?

On taxable parcels, about $13.0 million a year.

That is the hole. If year-1 reassessment is supposed to stay revenue-neutral — same dollars as before, just a fairer base — then the county, the towns, and the school districts still need their revenue. Successful appeals shrink the base. Remaining parcels cover it, in proportion to what they are assessed, or the body runs a shortfall. That is not an even split per parcel. Millage is a rate: a leftover $400,000 assessment carries more of the hole than a leftover $120,000 assessment.

What “revenue-neutral” actually meant

The first millage reset was the big one. County millage went from 89.98 mills on 1968 values to 5.79 mills on current-market assessments, effective for 2026 bills. The point was to stop the new, much larger assessments from exploding the levy. Municipal and school millages were reset the same way, each on their own base.

Appeals are a second cut. After hearings, $672 million of taxable assessed value is gone from the pre-hearing figures (the other $41 million of the $713 million is exempt: churches, some nonprofits, government. Exempt cuts do not have to be recouped from anyone).

To keep the same dollars on a smaller base, millage on what remains has to rise — or spending has to fall. That is the redistribution. It is not automatic in the sense of a mid-year surcharge. It is the arithmetic of a levy that is not allowed to shrink.

Three holes, not one pot:

Who still needs the money	Hole at 2026 millage	Who fills it
County (5.79 mills)	$3.89 million	Every taxable parcel in the county · about +0.16 mills
Municipalities	$2.55 million (by town)	Remaining parcels in that municipality
School districts	$6.59 million	Remaining parcels in that district

A Benton taxpayer helps fill a Scranton mall's county slice. They do not fill Scranton's city tax or Scranton School District millage.

Most of the hole is Scranton, and it is commercial

Of the $13.0 million, $7.03 million is on parcels in Scranton — 54%. That is about 5.3% of Scranton's taxable 2026 assessed value. If city, school, and county all recoup, combined millage there needs about +1.05 mills.

It is not a wave of house appeals. About 71% of the taxable assessed-value drop is commercial or industrial (683 parcels, $480 million). Residential is 3,780 appeals and $156 million. The top 10 parcels are 33% of the headline $713 million net; the top 50 are 53%.

Who files is not a random sample of the roll. Large commercial and industrial owners have the incentive and the counsel. Houses showed up in count; the dollars are concentrated. If the levy stays whole, people who never appealed — and people whose values did not get cut — cover those wins. The appeal board can be doing its job and remaining taxpayers still pay. Towns and schools do not shrink the budget because a mall won.

One parcel does an outsized share of the work. Steamtown 300 LLC (UPI 15607010002, 226 Lackawanna Ave) went from about $127.0 million pre-hearing to $26.4 million after — a $100.6 million cut. At Scranton's combined 2026 millage (county + city + Scranton School District, 21.70 mills), that is about $2.18 million of levy. One-sixth of the whole county's $13 million hole.

1 Fleet Holdings LLC (1 Fleet Way) is another ~$642,000. Two parcels, about 22% of the levy remaining taxpayers would cover if every body stays whole.

Dunmore's dashboard drop looks huge ($60 million headline) until you separate taxable from exempt. 1801 Jefferson LLC is a $25 million cut and exempt. That piece does not shift millage onto Dunmore homeowners.

What a typical bill's share looks like

These are not new line items on a 2026 bill. They are what it takes to fill the hole if millage rises (or already rose) so the levy does not shrink. County share is the same idea everywhere; city and school follow local bases.

Place	Assessed value	2026-style bill at current millage	Share of recoup
Scranton median residential	$155,680	~$3,378	~$163
Countywide median home, in Scranton	$180,685	~$3,921	~$189
Same house in Covington (North Pocono schools)	$180,685	~$3,454	~$71
Same house in La Plume (Lackawanna Trail)	$180,685	~$3,109	~$89

On a $180,685 home, the county piece of the recoup is about $29 anywhere in Lackawanna County. Covington's school number is lower than Scranton's because North Pocono only needs about +0.21 mills to fill its district hole, not Covington's 3.4% of township value.

Where else the municipal hole sits

After Scranton, no town is in the same league. Estimated county + municipal + school levy on each town's taxable appeal drop:

Municipality	Taxable AV drop	Levy to recoup	Share of local taxable base
Scranton	$324M	$7.03M	5.3%
Dunmore	$35M	$668k	2.4%
Moosic	$30M	$506k	2.7%
Covington	$24M	$454k	3.3%
Scott	$29M	$446k	3.7%
Archbald	$25M	$437k	2.3%
Blakely	$17M	$262k	2.5%
Olyphant	$14M	$237k	1.9%
South Abington	$14M	$236k	1.0%
Dickson City	$12M	$222k	1.4%

Concentration is a different ranking from dollars. La Plume's hole is only ~$59,000, but that is 6.5% of a small township base. North Abington is about 5.0%. A small town can feel millage even when the cash is modest.

Full town list and method: we matched each appeal's municipality and school district to 2026 millage, counted only parcels flagged taxable, and applied county 5.79 mills plus that place's municipal and school mills. Blakely has no municipal real-estate tax; its hole is county + Valley View only.

School districts

School millage is most of a typical bill, and most of the $13 million.

District	Taxable AV drop	Levy to recoup	Extra mills to fill it
Scranton	$324M	$3.10M	+0.53
North Pocono	$52M	$650k	+0.21
Abington Heights	$51M	$508k	+0.14
Valley View	$50M	$487k	+0.20
Lakeland	$44M	$384k	+0.23
Mid Valley	$36M	$361k	+0.17
Dunmore	$35M	$352k	+0.24
Riverside	$35M	$326k	+0.18
Lackawanna Trail	$18M	$192k	+0.30
Carbondale Area	$16M	$128k	+0.14
Old Forge	$11M	$106k	+0.12
Forest City Regional	$0.7M	$5k	+0.07

Scranton School District is 47% of all school levy in this recoup. Districts cannot always raise mills one-for-one; Act 1 still caps school millage. A hole that exists on paper is not the same as a millage vote that passes.

2026 is not a second $713 million

The 2026 list is the ordinary annual appeal cycle — not another countywide reassessment. Do not scale the 2025 $713 million by how many 2026 rows have posted so far.

As of September 2026 our index has 365 rows across 18 hearing days: 253 with results, 66 still scheduled, 46 pending a county report. The county says the window to file for 2027 tax-year consideration closed August 1, 2026.

Most of the 2026 headline assessed-value drop in those decided rows so far is exempt — one South Abington school parcel, Abington Center for Education LLC, is the bulk of it. Exempt cuts do not shift millage onto anyone. On taxable parcels, the implied levy so far is in the low hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, not another $13 million. Only about one in nine 2026 parcels were also on the 2025 list. Hearings are still being posted; this is not a millage-shift forecast.

Look it up as it updates: 2026 appeals.

Year 1 or year 2 — timing is the remaining fact check

Lackawanna County held 2025 reassessment appeal hearings roughly August through October 2025. It certified values November 14, 2025, effective January 1, 2026. That is the county trying to clean the roll before 2026 bills — not a multi-year stall on the 2025 docket. Later years of ordinary appeals are a different, smaller stream.

If 2026 millage was struck on the post-appeal certified roll, other taxpayers are already covering that $13 million in this year's bills. Revenue-neutral year 1 already used the smaller base.

If millage used pre-hearing Tyler values, 2026 collections come in light and the recoup is a 2027 budget and millage fight.

Our assessor snapshot still stores pre-hearing 2026 values on appealed parcels, so we cannot see from this table which roll the taxing bodies used. That is the quote to get from the Assessment Office and from Scranton, SSD, and the county budget office before anyone writes “millage will go up.”

Appeals are not the scandal

A mass reassessment will overshoot some commercial and industrial parcels. The appeal board exists for that. A $101 million cut on a mall is a story about how concentrated the new roll was, and about who pays if the levy is held constant — not a morality play about the owner who filed.

The civic question is narrower and sharper: when the county said year 1 would be revenue-neutral, did remaining taxpayers understand that successful appeals would be socialized onto the leftover base?

Look it up

2025 appeal results — search owner, address, UPI, municipality, school district
2026 appeals — current annual cycle (still being posted)
Millage calculator
Reassessment guide

Tap a parcel id to open it in Parcel Explorer.

How we counted

Rows are parcels that appeared on county 2025 appeal hearing schedules, with pre- and post-hearing values from county result reports (last bulk update November 2025). 4,936 of 4,968 have post-hearing values: 3,288 reduced, 1,567 unchanged, 28 increased, 32 pending. Net assessed-value change on decided rows: −$713,201,899. Taxable net: −$672,154,509.

County taxable 2026 assessed value in our CAMA table: $25.31 billion (still includes pre-hearing values on appealed parcels). Levy estimates use published 2026 county, municipal, and school millage. They are not a tax bill, a millage ordinance, or the county's certified total.

Always verify material facts with the county Assessment Office before tax planning, a sale, or a legal filing. Hearing schedules and result reports are in the assessor appeal hearings archive. Lackawanna Connect is an independent local publisher and is not affiliated with Lackawanna County government.

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