MIDDLEFIELD - Town supervisor David Bliss said he hasn't heard any complaints yet about this year's school tax bills.

"That was the plan. That's what we were striving for," he said.

Last year, a number of town residents were unhappy when they received their bills because the town's new equalization rate placed a larger share of the tax burden on Middlefield.

The state, which determines equalization rates, chalked it up to the fact that Middlefield had been under assessed for sometime and that the increase was just the result of the lower assessments being corrected by the recent re-evaluation of property.

Bliss said he contended that if Middlefield was under assessed, so, too, were the other nearby towns and was able to convince the state to take a look at it.

As a result, the state changed the equalization rate for other towns in the district to more fairly distribute the tax levy.

Steve Child, Otsego County director of real property tax services, said representatives from the state sat down and looked at the equalization rates, property sales and assessments and realized they shared some culpability for what happened in Middlefield.

Child said it was a case of the equalization rate not keeping pace with property sales.

The state agreed with Bliss' contention that other towns were under assessed and dropped the equalization rates for Hartwick and Otsego.

In Otsego, the equalization rate fell from 53.66 to 49 percent and in Hartwick from 65.87 to 58.00 percent.

Child said the reductions were larger than normal.

"You don't see significant drops like that in one year," he said.

CCS business manager Jim Collison said the changes in equalization rate made by the state alleviated some of the burden Middlefield experienced last year. The fact that Middlefield's equalization rate did not change this year also impacted the other towns.

Collison said Middlefield residents were the only ones whose tax rate declined, falling 3.42 percent from $13.78 to $13.30 per thousand.

The town of Hartwick, with the largest reduction in the equalization rate, saw an increase of 9.3 percent in their tax rate from $21.57 to $23.57.

The rate for town of Otsego residents went up 5.97 percent from $25.77 to $27.30.

Collison said the district had predicted an average increase in the tax rate of approximately 6 percent.

Both Collison and child agreed that anytime there is a change in the equalization rate, a shift will occur in how the tax levy is distributed among the towns and that sometimes it is hard to predict what will happen.

"It takes a year or two for everything to shake out," Collison said.