Latest Info
Latest Info – Chronological - latest first
July 6, 2014
Town of Portland will be doing a data collection to update property records in our town. This will not affect assessed values unless they find a glaring error the a new building not assessed or a missing building not reducing assessment, large improvements not built with a building permit, etc.
The town will not be doing a reval anytime soon. It would have to be put out to bid separately and we have convinced the board to wait until they get all the data updated and not look at it until then, there is no hurry.
We used a couple pie charts that I think got through and showed out points. The state has argued that a reval would stabilize our town taxes. Well that is true but our town taxes have been stable for the last 9 years. What hasn't been stable has been all of our other taxes. One of the pie charts shows what could happen with a reval of Portland only, knowing that our property values will go up.
See the charts at
Town Taxes as a Percentage of Total Property Taxes - Pie Chart
Reval effects on Portland's share of Taxes - Pie Chart
November 2013
Town of Portland Property Tax Update
Just a note to everyone of where we are going now.
So our next 6 goals
1. Get assessor to use favorable and substantiated sales data for
residential
2. Get assessor to throw out sales data for vacant properties
because it is not a sample that represents property distribution in our
town.
3. Get the town to establish and install assessor guidelines
4. Prevent a Portland only reval
5. Change Property Taxes at the county level - Starting with Mark Edwards, research what changes can be made at the county level since there is no way we can gain any traction statewide. Even if we can only address school and local taxes, that would be a start.
6. Sue the State, if practical - Still waiting on Lawyer Dan Spitzer to see if there is anything we can go after the state on, haven’t got anything promising yet.
Note: We are reaching out to anyone who has ideas on how to inform and mobilize the whole town, we need everyone’s support.
Bill
September 6, 2013 - Results of meeting with Senator Young and Assemblyman Goodell
Town of Portland Meeting with Senator Young and Assemblyman Goodell 9/6/13
Mark Rand, Tom Webb and myself met with Ms. Young and Mr. Goodell along with the Town board, Assessor and the County tax head Jim Caflish (surprise visitor).
The purpose of the meeting was supposed to be looking into the possibility of property tax reforms and to fill in Young & Goodell on our situation.
See our agenda (Which we presented) at
http://www.lifestylesport.com/v/vspfiles/assets/images/Property%20Taxes%20in%20Portland%20are%20out%20of%20control.pdf
What happened was a heavy push by Mr. Caflish & the Assessor on why we need a re-val and how much better off we would be for it. This was not the purpose or intention of our meeting.
See this page for more info about assessments, re-assessments (re-vals) and assessors.
·It almost seems like we were set up by the assessor and the county director and that their goal was to discredit us. At about the 11 minute mark, I said our citizen group may not get the opportunity to speak with the senator and assemblyman again so could I please read our presentation of a summary of our research, results and requests?
It was read with very few interruptions. It took about 12 minutes.
So here is the short story (Summary).
Here are some of the more alarming details.
Here it comes…… Jim Caflisch, County Tax Director "What I see going on here is that you are using your equalization rate to adjust values of your properties and that is totally wrong. Your level of assessment is all messed up because you are valuing different neighborhoods. Different classes, different types of properties, market values go up and down. You are trying to do the whole town with just an equalization rate. If you look at this sheet, I've listed some values on the waterfront, those assessed values aren't changing. That is what is wrong with your whole assessment roll here. You have a neighborhood on the lake, you have neighborhood in the village of Brocton, you have neighborhood west and east of Brocton, they're all separate neighborhoods. The values on those properties, all those residential homes, they are all going to change values a different rates. They're not going to be consistent. The lakefront is not going to be consistent with what is going on up here on route 20, on the escarpments. You have a very diverse town here. And that's why you need to have your values re-established through a revaluation and then keep this up to date"
Note: It is not what we are trying to do with the equalization rate, it is what the state is doing.
Dan Schrantz – What I don't understand is how the neighboring towns, most of which have much lower equalization rates than Portland, they really can't drop their rates any more, so it doesn't make sense. How are they getting away with it?
Jim Caflisch - Here's where your missing the point Dan. What they're doing in those localities, they are keeping those properties assessed consistently, their Level of Assessment is keep consistent with values.
Bill Ploetz – How are they changing their Level of Assessments?
Jim Caflisch - The assessor is going out and changing values.
Bill Ploetz – Are they doing a reval?
Jim Caflisch – They are not doing a reval but what they are doing is adjusting values based on sales in those neighborhoods. In my towns, French Creek, Mina and Sherman (who share an assessor) every 3 years the assessors puts new values on each area like Findlay Lake, agricultural etc. Your inventories here are so out of whack, you need to start from scratch.
The County Guy - Jim Caflisch, said he brought a random samples of a few assessment disparities. I looked at the list. My name, our neighbor Tom Webb, also at the meeting, and some of our other neighbors were on his list of 6 properties. I said, this is not a random list, two of us in this room are on the list. My name is on here, Tom Webb is on here, there is nothing random about it. He said he knew I was going to be there. I asked if he knew what that property was? He said "I don't know, I looked at the sale. It was purchased at much higher than the assessed value. I said that it is a barn, vacant land, not residential, wasn't purchased in the time line that we are discussing and that the state used no sales data anyhow to determine out equalization rate. Caflisch says "I know that but it isn't right."
I responded "We have an interim solution to help us out until and more permanent solution is reached. We can use sales data."
Assemblyman Goodell says " Sales are a true way to identify values" I agree and say that is what we are proposing to use.
This goes on and on. The assessor asks the Supervisor "Why did you call this meeting?" I start to answer because really I called this meeting and the supervisor facilitated it. She says "I was asking Dan" Dan says it was to present what our citizens group has found and to look at solutions and alternatives.
The assessor said that the numbers will show a reduction in our equalization rate not an increase in our favor and that there where lots of transactions to prove it. I asked if she ran the numbers yet? She said no. I said, then how can you say what the numbers will show?" What is stupid about this is that she is the one that enters the sales and she has all the data and does not know it. I looked the qualified arms length sales and there were 17 residential and only 6 non residential. That is a fair number of residential, representing a sensible cross section of our lakefront to non-lakefront properties. Those sales support an increase in the Residential rate to 66.22%. The non-residential sales include two freak sales of large lakefront lots. One assessed at $141,500 sold for $800K, another assessed at $66,8000 sold for $180K. Another assessed at $1740 sold for $15,000. These are not normal transactions. There were 9 vacant property sales and 5 of them were lakefront property so these sales can not be used against the town because they are not representative of the ratio of lakefront vacant land to non-lakefront vacant land.
Dan Schrantz (Town Supervisor) – Commented and read from NY State tax department of how, in 2007 at a cost of $4.8 million, by their own admission, stated how confusing and complex the NYS property tax system is. NYS is one of only 8 states that does not have a statewide standard of assessments. Plus it was pointed out the number of multi-jurisdictional school districts and many other issues that add to the complexity along with many other issues. (Note: Nothing ever happened with this study. )
Here is a link to that study
http://www.orps.state.ny.us/cptap/study/ChautauquaAssessingStudy.pdf
Dan Schrantz - What this study tells me : this is going to create more jobs, a bigger and more expensive agency.
Note:
We are still going to try to work with the assessor, hopefully with the Town Supervisors presence, to come up with a more favorable equalization rate.
Bill
July 6, 2014
Town of Portland will be doing a data collection to update property records in our town. This will not affect assessed values unless they find a glaring error the a new building not assessed or a missing building not reducing assessment, large improvements not built with a building permit, etc.
The town will not be doing a reval anytime soon. It would have to be put out to bid separately and we have convinced the board to wait until they get all the data updated and not look at it until then, there is no hurry.
We used a couple pie charts that I think got through and showed out points. The state has argued that a reval would stabilize our town taxes. Well that is true but our town taxes have been stable for the last 9 years. What hasn't been stable has been all of our other taxes. One of the pie charts shows what could happen with a reval of Portland only, knowing that our property values will go up.
See the charts at
Town Taxes as a Percentage of Total Property Taxes - Pie Chart
Reval effects on Portland's share of Taxes - Pie Chart
November 2013
Town of Portland Property Tax Update
Just a note to everyone of where we are going now.
So our next 6 goals
1. Get assessor to use favorable and substantiated sales data for
residential
2. Get assessor to throw out sales data for vacant properties
because it is not a sample that represents property distribution in our
town.
3. Get the town to establish and install assessor guidelines
4. Prevent a Portland only reval
5. Change Property Taxes at the county level - Starting with Mark Edwards, research what changes can be made at the county level since there is no way we can gain any traction statewide. Even if we can only address school and local taxes, that would be a start.
6. Sue the State, if practical - Still waiting on Lawyer Dan Spitzer to see if there is anything we can go after the state on, haven’t got anything promising yet.
Note: We are reaching out to anyone who has ideas on how to inform and mobilize the whole town, we need everyone’s support.
Bill
September 6, 2013 - Results of meeting with Senator Young and Assemblyman Goodell
Town of Portland Meeting with Senator Young and Assemblyman Goodell 9/6/13
Mark Rand, Tom Webb and myself met with Ms. Young and Mr. Goodell along with the Town board, Assessor and the County tax head Jim Caflish (surprise visitor).
The purpose of the meeting was supposed to be looking into the possibility of property tax reforms and to fill in Young & Goodell on our situation.
See our agenda (Which we presented) at
http://www.lifestylesport.com/v/vspfiles/assets/images/Property%20Taxes%20in%20Portland%20are%20out%20of%20control.pdf
What happened was a heavy push by Mr. Caflish & the Assessor on why we need a re-val and how much better off we would be for it. This was not the purpose or intention of our meeting.
See this page for more info about assessments, re-assessments (re-vals) and assessors.
·It almost seems like we were set up by the assessor and the county director and that their goal was to discredit us. At about the 11 minute mark, I said our citizen group may not get the opportunity to speak with the senator and assemblyman again so could I please read our presentation of a summary of our research, results and requests?
It was read with very few interruptions. It took about 12 minutes.
So here is the short story (Summary).
- There is a snowball's chance in you know where for property tax reform at the state level - Reason? There are more renters in NYS than property owners. Over 2,000,000 million in NYC alone live in government rent controlled apartments. NY is the only state that has city controlled rents. Renters do not care about property tax. Therefore the senators and assemblymen for the majority of our state do not care about property tax reform. Even if our local Assemblyman and congressmen were to propose legislation for property tax reform, it would be hard to gain any real traction, just can't see it happening. So much for that idea. We are going to research changes at the county level as Erie PA does.
- A Re-Val is inevitable. - The county is pushing for it, the state makes it so difficult and confusing if the valuation is not at 100%, how the state deals so illogically with equalization rate, it is going to happen. If it does, it better be for the whole county or things will still be all goofed up and Portland risks an even higher Market Value forcing Town of Portland property owners to pay an even larger share while our neighboring towns continue to pay a smaller share.
- The chance of Portland getting a more favorable Equalization rate is looking slim. - Our assessor appears to be fighting us every step of the way as far as using data that would be more favorable for the town. Our perception is that she does not believe that the data will be more favorable, even though she admittedly has not looked at the data, even though she is the one that has already entered the data for the sales and I have downloaded and analyzed it, showing it the Town's favor.
- Our perception is that the Town Assessor is not willing to work with us to use the most favorable data and has, it seems, her own agenda of getting a re-val, at what every it costs our town and regardless of which neighborhoods it affects which is really everyone in the Town of Portland.
- The assemblyman has promised that he will make sure the state property tax people keep an open ear to our points and data. - This is good at least in theory. Hopefully we can force the use of more favorable data.
Here are some of the more alarming details.
Here it comes…… Jim Caflisch, County Tax Director "What I see going on here is that you are using your equalization rate to adjust values of your properties and that is totally wrong. Your level of assessment is all messed up because you are valuing different neighborhoods. Different classes, different types of properties, market values go up and down. You are trying to do the whole town with just an equalization rate. If you look at this sheet, I've listed some values on the waterfront, those assessed values aren't changing. That is what is wrong with your whole assessment roll here. You have a neighborhood on the lake, you have neighborhood in the village of Brocton, you have neighborhood west and east of Brocton, they're all separate neighborhoods. The values on those properties, all those residential homes, they are all going to change values a different rates. They're not going to be consistent. The lakefront is not going to be consistent with what is going on up here on route 20, on the escarpments. You have a very diverse town here. And that's why you need to have your values re-established through a revaluation and then keep this up to date"
Note: It is not what we are trying to do with the equalization rate, it is what the state is doing.
Dan Schrantz – What I don't understand is how the neighboring towns, most of which have much lower equalization rates than Portland, they really can't drop their rates any more, so it doesn't make sense. How are they getting away with it?
Jim Caflisch - Here's where your missing the point Dan. What they're doing in those localities, they are keeping those properties assessed consistently, their Level of Assessment is keep consistent with values.
Bill Ploetz – How are they changing their Level of Assessments?
Jim Caflisch - The assessor is going out and changing values.
Bill Ploetz – Are they doing a reval?
Jim Caflisch – They are not doing a reval but what they are doing is adjusting values based on sales in those neighborhoods. In my towns, French Creek, Mina and Sherman (who share an assessor) every 3 years the assessors puts new values on each area like Findlay Lake, agricultural etc. Your inventories here are so out of whack, you need to start from scratch.
The County Guy - Jim Caflisch, said he brought a random samples of a few assessment disparities. I looked at the list. My name, our neighbor Tom Webb, also at the meeting, and some of our other neighbors were on his list of 6 properties. I said, this is not a random list, two of us in this room are on the list. My name is on here, Tom Webb is on here, there is nothing random about it. He said he knew I was going to be there. I asked if he knew what that property was? He said "I don't know, I looked at the sale. It was purchased at much higher than the assessed value. I said that it is a barn, vacant land, not residential, wasn't purchased in the time line that we are discussing and that the state used no sales data anyhow to determine out equalization rate. Caflisch says "I know that but it isn't right."
I responded "We have an interim solution to help us out until and more permanent solution is reached. We can use sales data."
Assemblyman Goodell says " Sales are a true way to identify values" I agree and say that is what we are proposing to use.
This goes on and on. The assessor asks the Supervisor "Why did you call this meeting?" I start to answer because really I called this meeting and the supervisor facilitated it. She says "I was asking Dan" Dan says it was to present what our citizens group has found and to look at solutions and alternatives.
The assessor said that the numbers will show a reduction in our equalization rate not an increase in our favor and that there where lots of transactions to prove it. I asked if she ran the numbers yet? She said no. I said, then how can you say what the numbers will show?" What is stupid about this is that she is the one that enters the sales and she has all the data and does not know it. I looked the qualified arms length sales and there were 17 residential and only 6 non residential. That is a fair number of residential, representing a sensible cross section of our lakefront to non-lakefront properties. Those sales support an increase in the Residential rate to 66.22%. The non-residential sales include two freak sales of large lakefront lots. One assessed at $141,500 sold for $800K, another assessed at $66,8000 sold for $180K. Another assessed at $1740 sold for $15,000. These are not normal transactions. There were 9 vacant property sales and 5 of them were lakefront property so these sales can not be used against the town because they are not representative of the ratio of lakefront vacant land to non-lakefront vacant land.
Dan Schrantz (Town Supervisor) – Commented and read from NY State tax department of how, in 2007 at a cost of $4.8 million, by their own admission, stated how confusing and complex the NYS property tax system is. NYS is one of only 8 states that does not have a statewide standard of assessments. Plus it was pointed out the number of multi-jurisdictional school districts and many other issues that add to the complexity along with many other issues. (Note: Nothing ever happened with this study. )
Here is a link to that study
http://www.orps.state.ny.us/cptap/study/ChautauquaAssessingStudy.pdf
Dan Schrantz - What this study tells me : this is going to create more jobs, a bigger and more expensive agency.
Note:
We are still going to try to work with the assessor, hopefully with the Town Supervisors presence, to come up with a more favorable equalization rate.
Bill