Thousands of residents headed to the Orleans Parish Assessor’s Office to challenge their assessments on Monday, with lines snaking through the fourth floor of City Hall and two satellite locations opened up to handle the traffic.

Late in the afternoon, many said they had been waiting between two and four hours for a meeting on Monday, the final day to contest their assessments in person.

Dozens were turned away after the office shut its doors for the day, given a ticket to prove they were in line before the deadline and told they could come back in the morning to have their appeals heard.

“There’s no process. This is chaos,” said one woman who declined to give her name as she left the Assessor’s Office at City Hall. The woman said she had spent an hour and a half at the Lakeview office and two hours at City Hall before being told to come back on Tuesday.

It’s not unusual for thousands of property owners to turn out to contest their assessments. In 2012, the first major reassessment after Williams took office as the first citywide assessor, property owners complained of waiting for up to 12 hours before meeting with a member of the assessor’s staff.

This year’s reassessment, however, was expected to draw an even larger crowd due to the breadth and scale of the increases. About 24,000 property owners were informed recently their assessments had gone up by 50%, and more than a third of those found out their properties had more than doubled in value.

As of the middle of last week, 4,600 people had showed up to contest their assessments in person and more than 1,740 had filed online appeals. 

Devin Johnson, a spokesman for Williams, said it would not be unreasonable to say thousands showed up on Monday, though he did not have exact figures available as of press time.

Johnson said the opening of satellite locations was aimed at streamlining the process. He also noted the period to contest the assessments was 30 days this year, twice as long as in the past, though many residents did not get their assessment notices until that process was already underway.

Those who missed the chance to appeal their assessments in person aren’t out of luck just yet. While Monday marked the end of the so-called “informal appeals” process, where owners can try to prove their case to the assessor's staff in person, a “formal appeal” process will continue online through 4 p.m. Thursday.

Formal appeals are reviewed by Assessor’s Office staff, who can modify values if they agree the value set by the office was erroneous. If they disagree, those appeals go to the City Council, which has a consultant evaluate all the claims before the council votes on any changes next month.

Those appeals can be filed online, at nolaassessor.modria.com, or residents can download a form at nolaassessor.com to be turned in at City Hall by Thursday. If residents turn in hard copies of the form, they must include four copies of the appeal and any supporting documents.

The formal appeals process also provides another chance for those who walked away empty-handed after meeting with the assessor’s staff to make their case.

Arthur Cooper went to City Hall on Monday to argue that his property near Esplanade Avenue and North Miro Street should not have jumped in value from $85,000 to $170,000, citing nearby homes that he said are twice the size but are assessed at a lower value. But the assessor's staff wouldn’t accept that comparison and did not change his assessment.

Cooper said he plans to file a formal appeal.

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