About 40 percent of the homeowners who received questionnaires in preparation for the 2012 property reassessment returned the forms to the Allegheny County Office of Property Assessments, officials told Common Pleas Judge R. Stanton Wettick Jr. on Wednesday during a monthly status report meeting.

The county, which was expecting to get back about 100,000 forms, which were sent to residential property owners on Feb. 5, saw about 233,000 questionnaires returned, said county Manager Jim Flynn.

Judge Wettick, who is supervising the court-ordered reassessment, was not only happy with the news, but also seemingly satisfied that the county is on track to meet the implementation of new property values in 2012.

Mr. Flynn reported that the county has hired Cole Layer Trumble Co., a division of Tyler Technologies, to help collect and analyze the data on all 570,000 parcels of property for the implementation of new values in 2012.

The county has hired CLT -- a firm that specializes in computerized mass appraisal of property -- on a six-month contract for $100,000, pending the finalization of a long term contract with the company, Mr. Flynn said.

As part of the contract, the county has also taken on Wesley Graham, a CLT employee, as its acting chief property assessment officer. Mr. Flynn added that CLT and Mr. Graham will shepherd much of the reassessment process, especially with regard to a parcel-by-parcel review.

Allegheny County's base-year system of property valuation was thrown out by the state Supreme Court last year on grounds that it violated the uniformity clause of the Pennsylvania Constitution.

The base-year system, which sets assessments based on the value of property in 2002, including new construction, is inherently unconstitutional, the court said, because it is unfair for property owners with stagnant or falling values.

Judge Wettick in December accepted a county plan to implement a reassessment by 2012.

According to the county, a parcel-by-parcel review was done on 175,000 properties during the 2005 reassessment, which was not certified because county Executive Dan Onorato threw it out.

The properties reviewed in 2005 will not see a parcel-by-parcel inspection in this round, Mr. Flynn said. But any information received on questionnaires from property owners in that category will be used to update county records about the characteristics of their properties, he added.

Mailers to commercial property owners were sent March 4.

The county, which is currently entering and analyzing the data from the mailers, will draw up a detailed time frame of how the reassessment will unfold by month's end, after the county has an up-to-date database of all its validated property sales, Mr. Flynn said.

The validation of property sales is a critical step of establishing the value of properties, Mr. Flynn said, and that process will include consultation of real estate agents in the region to establish some benchmarks on how property values relate to sale price.

After that, the county will draw up a detailed step-by-step plan of how the reassessment will take shape, said Mr. Flynn.

Judge Wettick scheduled the next status report meeting for April 14.

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