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1993-04-09 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING APRIL 9,1993 4:06 p.m. MTG.#28 TOWN BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT Supervisor Michel Brandt Councilman Betty Monahan Councilman Susan Goetz Councilman Nick Caimano Councilman Pliney Tucker Attorney Paul Dusek Helen Otte Town Assessor Michel Swan-Director of Real Property Service-Warren County Supervisor Brandt-There have been questions about the commercial revals how many of those were potential law suits how many have to be resolved yet? Ms. Otte-We have discussed three or four of the larger ones and some are now into litigation ... Attorney Dusek-Noted that the ones in litigation should be discussed in executive session... Supervisor Brandt-What we want to look at is over all the reval of whether we should delay it and work out the problems or whether we should go full steam ahead. Ms. Otte-Noted that she had met with four of the large property owners, complex properties, and none of the three really contested the value they wanted to see if there was any give in our figure they did not come back with any hard facts or opinion of value or appraisals. We have seen 100 of the commercials out of 450. Supervisor Brandt-What is your evaluation, what do you think? Ms. Otte-I feel that the figures look good I think that we are making the corrections and some of the modifications that you had questions about, that is land, subdivision lots some of the commercial properties, homes in certain areas that were twenty thousand too high we have worked on those all week long we have come up with revised land schedules, revised depreciation schedules and were able to put these in. The State is going to run some new land values on vacant parcels up at that lake the same on Glen Lake. I think we have addressed a lot of the questions that you all have brought up, the citizens have brought to you and we have two more weeks to finish that work which is what we are going to be doing full time. Councilman Monahan-Questioned if Ms. Otte was aware of the 200' set back for septic systems by Lake George Park Commission rulings? Noted many lots cannot make that, will they get credit? Ms. Otte- That will be reflected in the market...the market will determine our assessed values...we will make adjustments on a case by case basis. Supervisor Brandt-Noted that he had heard from an individual who received two reports on saying there would be no change in assessment and another showing a large increase. Ms. Otte-We did come upon some typographical errors, key punch errors and it took some time to proof read the entire roll and we did send notices out to anybody, in total there were fifteen that were effected. Councilman Monahan-I know you said the time has been used up, some that have gotten late notices.. Ms. Otte-I will see them all... Attorney Dusek-What is your cut off date Helen now in terms of having to make a decision one way or another? Ms. Otte- The cut off, I believe we have passed the cut off date, the time we have to tum all of the work into the County for production of the tentative roll is the April 23rd. As far as going back and put things back to last years level we have between now and the 23rd and there is not enough time to go back and re- accomplish all of those... Mr. Swan-Logistically we have worked off the new roll, so in order to go back to the other one we would have to take all the additional information all the new construction and property splits and everything else and pull them out of the new roll and put them back into the old roll. Ms. Otte-I would have to reprice them back into the 87 levels. Councilman Tucker-Can we extend the time? Mr. Swan-I do not know if you can. Attorney Dusek - I will research that... Mr. Swan-Noted that the City has changed their roll date to June 6th or 7th they were allowed to do that by their City Charter. Councilman Tucker-What would be the penalty if we did not meet the deadline date? Mr. Swan-There is no real penalty, are you going for reimbursement, you will lose the State reimbursement the second thing you would put the County especially my department in a bind if we could get the work done in time or not, as far as the final assessment roll and getting grievance day squared away and getting the tax bills done in September. Councilman Tucker-I am hearing that people are surprised that nobody has come and looked at anybodies property, I have got people telling me two identical houses built by the same contractor a man finished the house completely a raised ranch did it without building permits it is all done, hers goes up his goes down. Ms. Otte-I hope they came in ...that is what we are here for. Councilman Tucker-This woman does not believe that she should be tattling on her neighbors. Mr. Swan-If she comes in Helen cannot go in and change the other persons assessment the only thing she can do is affect the assessment of the person who is complaining... Attorney Dusek-That is normally the rule after the tentative assessment set for May 1 st. right now Helen could do anything she wants with any of the values around town. Ms. Otte-I could, it would be unlikely I would with something like that... Mr. Sawn-I jumping the gun I am assuming we are in a grievance proceeding. Right now is not the time to say whether your assessment is wrong or right compared to your neighbors that comes in a grievance proceeding, right now is trying to determinate whether your property is fairly valued, the proper market value, the 1st of May we start trying to determine if everybody is assessed equalibility with neighbors. Supervisor Brandt-In Helen's notes of what we would have to do if we extended this to 1994, item 2 field review new values...! have been hearing over and over people are saying come and look at our property... Ms. Otte- The field review of the values is not done on a house by house basis with a visit to the property in mass appraisal a field review it taking the computer generated values out into a neighborhood and looking at them for comparison. What people are talking about is a data recollect which you can do, you can pay to have the data all recollected in the Town, I do not feel that it is necessary because I think we can handle it on case by case basis when people come in to tell us that we have the wrong square footage or wrong information on their parcels. What I hear that you are asking for is a recollect of all data which involves a knock on the door to see the interior, how much renovations have been done that we cannot see from the outside. Councilman Caimano-Ifthatjob was done inhouse there would be much more realism, the problem is the people that are doing this mass appraisal and are asked to make judgements really do not know the neighborhood and are confused between Bedford Close and Westland and those kinds of things and maybe the same house you and I know maybe there is a great difference in those neighborhoods, that is really where the problems come in as far as I know, this mass appraisal seems to have gotten us into trouble twice now because of that. Councilman Tucker-The complaints that I have been hearing about is really off the wall, people have not gone and look at it, they have taken stuff of your cards, your information, they sat in here and told us in a meeting that our information was not correct. Supervisor Brandt-I feel like Nick, it is a problem with the system, call mass appraisal and it does not include going in and inspecting, people are offended that there values are being assessed against their place without someone coming in an looking. Councilman Goetz-When I talked to you, you seem concerned that action could be brought against you personally. Ms. Otte- Yes. The issue of sending out the notices to all the people 12000 to tell them the old assessments have been reinstated and then I think we would have a lot of those people come in at grievance time and I think you would stand a chance of having a various serious challenge brought against the assessment rolls by one of these 9,000 people that we have not seen in our meetings so far. They could make a very good case for inequities mainly because we just sent out notices telling them advertising these inequities and I think that if the roll was challenged it would go to court I do not know what the proceedings are as far as challenging an entire assessment roll...1 am certain it would include from the Judge a very serious censor of the assessor who signed the roll May 1st... Councilman Goetz-You signed the rolls prior knowing that the data base was not right so what is the difference? Ms. Otte-I am not saying the data base is not right, I signed it prior with as an equatable a roll as we were able to produce in those years, with the plan and the project under motion that we were going to do the reval to get rid of the inequities and even up things on the roll. Now, we have said to people we have done this project these are the results we have found the inequities we are presenting them to the individual owners saying you have over paid by this much or you have underpaid by this much and now to go back to the old assessments, the previous assessments you are saying well you are going to have to be nice and bear with us one more year while we try and do something else and I do not think we have decided on what it is, what the other thing is that we would do. Councilman Tucker-The estimates that you sent out are they official record, they are not official record until they are adopted. Ms. Otte- That is correct. Councilman Tucker-How can we be sued for an action that is not official? Councilman Caimano-How many people have you seen in your meetings? Ms. Otte-Had meetings, letters or talked to, 2000... Supervisor Brandt -As I understand mass appraisal, we hired for not a great deal of money people to come and help us do this limited amount of appraisal work. As I understand it our contracts for the appraisal firms are such those firms would not come in court to defend their appraisals we would have to hire them to do that with additional monies or hire someone else if we were challenged to come in and check the appraisals. That could be a very serious matter, if there are hundreds of people that do not agree and they challenge us we are going to have to hire someone to be our official testimony. Attorney Dusek -You would not have to hire someone during the small claims proceedings or the Board of Review but if you get to the Article 7 stage then I think there is some case law to the effect that the Assessor can stand alone on the assessment but the practical situation is and there are laws to support it too that appraisals are usually required. Ms. Otte-I would not have recommended running new values on a flawed data base, I think that Tony Norce when he mentioned the data, he was speaking from the stand point of his company, when we were questioning the values, he said all the data was not all exactly as we would like to have seen it. Ideally what a reval company likes to do is go in and do it from start to finish, they like to go in collect the data do the values, do the field review, do the meetings on the whole project and it costs $65.00 a parcel. I felt that we had good enough data with all our efforts that we have made and the new construction in town and the field checks that we had a good enough data base to begin running values on or I would not have recommend it. Attorney Dusek-Have they asserted that there is major problem with the data base? Ms. Otte-No. Mr. Swan-CL T did the data collection in the City of Glens Falls they found more errors in their own work than they found in Helen's stuff. Supervisor Brandt-$600,000 to $700,000 if you did it the whole way and certainly if done that way there are flaws too, I look at it maybe we should do more inhouse and take our time to find the problems and go look at the property where people want to look at the property and then implement it, maybe that does not qualify for the State's formula of $3. per parcel but that is not really all that important to me, as important it is to have a good quality appraisal and a good quality tax roll that the citizens believe in. Councilman Caimano- Y our answer that we would lose the three dollars a parcel is if we ignored the deadline if we ask for an extension we do not lose it anyway right? Mr. Swan-I do not know that the State grants extensions...The City was allowed to under their charter...there is a possibility if you delayed it a year you might be able to collect next year, I do not know... Ms. Otte-re: 2000 parcels, we have looked at those, we have been out to see the ones who have asked for field inspections we have adjusted values when we thought they should be adjusted we redid land schedules in a couple of neighborhoods all of these two thousand are what we are handling right now, all of the 2000 are being handled and will on an individual basis, we do not take an handful of them at a time, we consider every single one of them. Councilman Tucker-When you make the adjustment will these people be notified after it is all over and said they cannot have another word to say about what is happening. Ms. Otte- They will be notified at the end of April and then there isn't time to come in again before the May 1st. publishing of the roll... Councilman Caimano-They will have grievance day.... Ms. Otte- They will have one with me, I can make recommendations to the Review Board, then they have the review board and then small claims. Councilman Caimano-How many appeared at Grievance Day last year? Ms. Otte-About 150 total... Councilman Monahan-Questioned if someone in an area questions the value placed on land will others in the area be looked at even if they have not been in? Ms. Otte- That is what we are doing when I said we are doing an overall neighborhood adjustment... Discussed School Budget-the public needs to attend the School Board Meetings... Supervisor Brandt-How many grievances can we handle and do them right? Ms. Otte-150 we had a one day session and 6 or 7 evening sessions to give consideration to these...They have a computer program to draw in comparables to do their work faster, we plan a couple days of hearings and more ifneeded....they have until July 1st for the final roll. Supervisor Brandt -Can they handle large quantities and do equitable jobs? Councilman Caimano-My honest opinion, no. I think what happens is that to the lay person not for you, is as the days goes on the mind boggles and you just got to get through, it is a chore I do not know how you do it. Attorney Dusek -Noted that Helen can still react to inequities her self and make a difference there...! have had time to look up the previous question, Real Property Tax Law concern the May 1st date and it does not look like that law has any flexibility built into it... Mr. Caimano- There seems to be a prevalent out there of this review done on a neighborhood basis by people who did not know the neighborhood that caused some problems, my question to you is what is the probability that the great majority of those will be handled properly if they were handled improperly to begin with? Ms. Otte-I think the question that I really think should be asked is the level of assessing here, have we gotten the values a little bit high, are we, I think I have addressed this to you at the Board meeting are the values may be ten thousand too high in a neighborhood or twenty thousand too high. There are a couple of neighborhoods where no doubt that has happened and we are going to move those down, that is a pretty simple process, the other ones I feel that this company has had tremendous experience in reviewing neighborhoods using comparable sale, so that when they go out they have a sheet of five comparable sales that they can draw from to draw a conclusion as to an assessment on the subject property. They worked through the sheets much more easily than I do, I have more knowledge of the neighborhoods but they have the sales...they are always tieing it to statistically correct information and sales comparisons... Councilman Goetz-I am concerned about the people that have not come in that may have legitimate problems and they are not the type of people that even know how to do it. Ms. Otte-We will probably see them, maybe we will see them next year, they will be more apt to come in and see me. We will have ironing out to do next year, or even the year after it takes about three years for everything to sift down. Supervisor Brandt-The problem is the mass appraisal, we are spending 6-10 dollars a parcel to get all the information you cannot do it, so your doing something better than what you have and it is subject to some errors. Everybody I talked to trusts our department, they did not use to but they do today, can't we build more of a department instead of looking at this cost every so often of six to seven hundred thousand dollars for a major reappraisal or the convulsions you go through with a mass appraisal that we are doing right now at $100,000, spend at a steady rate more money in our assessment dept. and not go thorough these mass appraisals? Ms. Otte-When you talk about putting valves on 12,000 parcels I do not care who does it, it is mass appraisal, I would be using the same basic process to do it and I would have to hire people to come in and do the field review portion...! did 1500 of them myself, that is all I could do in a years time with my regular... Supervisor Brandt -Suppose you had one more employee with that capability? Ms. Otte-One more would not be able to do it, you have to do it within a certain time frame because you have to have a current evaluation. Supervisor Brandt-That is if you are doing N.Y. State reval by their standards, lets do a Queensbury standard, if you do 1500 a year and you got another person that can do 1500 that is 3000 a year every five years you are done with the thing, she can under the law set the values...you got a base year, you have all the information to date in your files, you take a year and listen to people and go through it and make an adjustment, from there on you do not have to go into the reval business you put one more full time person that's got the qualification and you do your own and you never go back to this. ..If it is flawed we have to pay in litigation and other appraisals and getting expert testimony we are litigating against our own people, I do not like that. Ms. Otte-Ifthis was an inhouse appraisal there would still be members of the public who are rankled. Supervisor Brandt-It would not be in the quantities that we have today. Councilman Monahan-The people need to bring their facts in... Councilman Caimano-Ifyou hired local people to do the job the realism would be better, they would understand the difference between Peggy Ann Road and Orchard Drive or Wincrest, that is where the comparable sales have fallen apart. Ms. Otte-We do have it divided into neighborhoods, I chose the neighborhoods...I designed 50 neighborhoods in the Town of Queensbury I would match Bedford Close to other neighborhoods of similar quality etc...they only drew from the neighborhoods that I said they could draw from... Councilman Tucker-Two identical homes, Hidden Hills is famous for this, a colonial sold for 140 a ranch sold next to it for 90,000 the house at 140 isn't worth the same in the Pines where there are houses compatible in price all around it, is it? Ms. Otte-They were not compared to those... Councilman Monahan-There is never a time this is going to be a perfect system... Councilman Tucker-What is the time frame when the State says we should do this again? Mr. Swan-There is no law right now, there are several before the legislature, a cycle bill which requires that revaluations be required every so many years, there is no provision in the law right now. Councilman Tucker-What is your opinion on when this should be done again? Mr. Swan-Every three years to four years. Councilman Caimano- The theory is that when you do it more often you get a better product... Councilman Tucker-We have Helen, if we were to hire two more people and she said she did 1500 of them, with two more that is 4500 per year, two and a half ... Ms. Otte-I am not saying I can do 1500 every year, I totally left this years work completely go while I did the 1500 for the reval...it is not something you can do on a every year basis. You have a full time job, just doing the job. Mr. Swan-All the Assessors in the County, we would love to get to a point where we are doing it on a County wide basis on a cycle basis, and I think that would help the school districts it would help everything else this is one of my goals that I am pushing for at the County level, is to let the State give me the opportunity to be able to do the values right here, we have the computer space to do it, we just need the pernnsslOn. Supervisor Brandt-It would think with the convulsion that Queensbury is going through and Glens Falls you could find enough votes to do anything you want to ... Attorney Dusek-How many town are doing revals right now? Mr. Swan-Horicon is doing one right now, next year Warrensburg and Thurman when they finish everybody but Stony Creek and Johnsburg would have been done in the County in the last two and a half years, it would be an ideal point for me to say to take it over on a County level, because everyone has gone through it and gotten their maintenance aid, the data is reasonably well organized in the same fashion in all the Towns and hopefully in good condition, this is what I would like to push and the Assessors feel the same way, take it over on a local level instead of hiring a contractor to come in run it thorough the State values down there in Albany and bring it back here and go through all this. Supervisor Brandt-In the end it is your ... Ms. Otte-I made the decision about a week ago, ...we have done the hard part, the notices went out with the values we have had the outcry you know exactly where the people are that were hurt the most that is not going to change in the next two months when we finish the rest of the process, you know who those people are they make themselves well heard, they have had attention from me and I think you have done the hard part. The next part is more opportunity for the public to even have a better chance at having review and ... Supervisor Brandt -You send them out a new notice of what you came to as a result of this? Ms. Otte- Yes. I have not included in the impact where most of this years new construction and subdivisions that is a new nice chunk of new assessed value that will go on to off set... even the Review Board changes will be cushioned by that same amount of new construction... Supervisor Brandt-Where is the Board on this what do you want to do? Councilman Tucker-I do not want to accept it, not any reflection on the people doing the work here, there is lot of people that are shook up ... Councilman Monahan-The cost is we delay this in dollars and cents Helen is going to be substantial I would pursume. Supervisor Brandt-My feeling is I would rather spend money take a year and listen to the people and keep all the data we have refine it and implement it a year from now and not be in confrontation with our citizens...! would rather spend more money in that department and maintain that tax roll and do a better job of maintaining it then go thorough this reval. Councilman Monahan-As I understand the system if it is done in 1994 every parcel would have to be refigured to 94 values. Supervisor Brandt-That is done with a computer and you look at a couple of comparables and you adjust the whole thing... Councilman Caimano- What is the cost if we wait a year? Ms. Otte- The field review would be $5.00 a parcel...it has to be run on a mass appraisal capability ... Supervisor Brandt-The State owns that program, that program can be purchased from a County in New York State ...1 will find out the name of the County... Mr. Swan-You can buy mass programs to do mass appraisal work, too many parcels to run on a PC I believe you would have to run it on a County computer. Supervisor Brandt-Do them on a County basis and gear it on the County level right now... Councilman Caimano-I would like to see what the cost would be doing it another way. Ms. Otte-I think it would be an excellent alternative for the future, the question is what do we do with this one now? Are you saying you want to scrap this one now and Supervisor Brandt-I am not saying scrap it I am saying keep all the data and refine it and implement it...and use it for tax purposes next year and if across the board there is a two percent inflation rate or three percent inflation rate factor that in... Councilman Caimano-Questioned what a normal questioning would be on a reval? Mr. Swan-l 5-20% is a normal questioning...over 20% there is some sort of a problem. Councilman Goetz-Noted that there is an improvement in the office, everyone has confidence in you, I want you to delay it. Councilman Tucker-I have not heard any complaints about this lady and all I can tell you is that we are going to be working on the budget we may not be back here next year but I am favor of putting the money in the budget to do what has got to be done. Councilman Caimano- W e need to know if you were to do it yourself, how many people would you need, what would the cost be to buy the program... Supervisor Brandt-The program we can get thorough the County...ifwe generated this on a County level and bought the program for the County computer and worked with all the towns on the County level then we would look at our staffing to get the data together to refine our rolls and bring them to the county, the question would then be staffing changes... Councilman Monahan-If you went to a County system could you have that for 1994 or 1995 tax year? Mr. Swan-If I started right now with additional personnel and computer program, there is no way it would be operational before 1995. Buying the computer program is cheap part, it is the maintenance contract that you have to buy to keep it going... Supervisor Brandt-Look at this County wide and each Town could go in then and use it... Mr. Swan-I am all for it. Councilman Monahan-I think the data should be collected by the local assessors... Ms. Otte-I will sit down and look at man hours and work days and how many parcels can you do in a day... Supervisor Brandt-There are three who have said please refine the data we have gathered and implement it next year. Nick is saying give us a cost to do it ourselves and I would like to do that... Councilman Monahan-I am not prone either way, I think there is always going to be problems...my concern is how much can Helen handle between now and the cut off date, to find all these inequities.. Ms. Otte-What I am going to do is proceed as if this is going on May 1st, this is still in the works, I will take the time out to do this, the problem is every hour or two I take out to do some of this work is preventing me from doing the very work that you are asking me to do, it is getting critical at this point, I have ten more work days.. Supervisor Brandt-I wanted you to be totally aware that Mr. Salvadore told that the County is coming to the Town and saying you request money for local support programs in Queensbury there were two, one at $5,000 requested by the Opera Festival and $4,000 by the Balloon Festival and the County is trying to push that over to the Town, to request and dole it out, of the Nine thousand they would fund Eight Thousand for Queensbury. There is a legal issue I think and I have asked the lawyer about it, he is going to research it and make you aware of what is going on. Attorney Dusek-You cannot give money away so you have to have a legal basis. Supervisor Brandt-Mr. Salvadore does not think we should get involved and there are legalities here and he is saying he will be checking our papers. Any other business to come before the Board? On motion the meeting was adjourned. Respectfully submitted, Miss Darleen Dougher Town Clerk