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Thread: Full market assessments coming?

  1. #76
    Member gorja's Avatar
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    From today's Cheektowaga Bee-
    Town cancels town-wide residential reassessments
    September 25, 2019

    by BRYAN JACKSON

    The Cheektowaga Town Council voted 4-2 on Tuesday night to cancel a previously approved contract to complete a town-wide reassessment of all residential properties, as the surrounding debate laid bare economic, geographic and racial divisions in the ever-diversifying inner-ring suburb of Buffalo.

    Deputy Supervisor Brian Nowak, who, along with Councilman Gerald Kaminski, voted against rescinding the contract, blasted the decision, saying neighborhoods in the north and west parts of town are shouldering an unfair share of the tax burden due to reassessment schedules.

    “The argument was brought up here about wanting to help low-income folks and seniors,” Nowak said. “I have put the data together that that is B—S—, that canceling this does not help lower-income people. It doesn’t help seniors. It doesn’t help bring new people into this town.”

    He presented data to the board and public that he said showed the problem with the current tax system.

    “The two lowest median income neighborhoods … they were reassessed most recently,” he said, pointing to maps showing census tract data on income and racial and ethnic makeup. “They’re essentially subsidizing property taxes for everybody because they were assessed most recently.”

    Currently, town taxes work on a neighborhood-to-neighborhood assessment basis, with some sections of town reassessed last in 2017, some not since 2015 and still others two years in a row. In order to compensate for rising home sale prices and the speed at which they are selling since previous reassessments, yearly assessments used for tax bills rely on an equalization rate, which was 93 in 2018 and 85 in 2019. What that means, in essence, is that properties are sometimes assessed lower than their market value, 85% of that value, in 2019, for example.

    The crux of the issue for proponents of the town-wide reassessment is equity, a concept that came up time and time again during the public comment period that brought seven speakers — all in favor of a town-wide reassessment and against the resolution to cancel the contract — to the podium.

    “Simply put, the homes [reassessed] in 2017 are likely paying more than their fair share of the taxes,” said Melissa Rokitka, who said her home was last assessed in 2017. “Assessing the whole town in the same year will create an opportunity to allow the taxpayers of Cheektowaga to pay their fair share.”

    Rokitka, as well as nearly everyone else — resident, representative or otherwise — who spoke throughout the night, said she had no problem “paying her fair share,” and, in fact, welcomed it. However, she was concerned the current system is not equitable and could drive people out of the town.

    “Moving forward, Cheektowaga needs to consider all of its residents and all of their income levels when deciding to do assessments,” she said. “We would hate for Cheektowaga to begin to tax out our lower-income families, which are currently the communities paying the most, the higher percentage right now.”

    However, Supervisor Diane Benczkowski, who cosponsored the resolution to cancel the contract with Councilwoman Linda Hammer, said the money could be better spent on other projects in the town, citing a pending update to Cheektowaga’s emergency radio system used by first responders, body cameras for the Cheektowaga Police Department and sewer work related to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s Consent Order. She estimated that 50 residents had reached out to her in opposition to the town-wide reassessment plan.

    She said that no matter what, the reassessment system would be seen as unfair to some, claiming that the only way to ensure fairness would be to divide up the tax levy and have all property owners pay the same dollar for-dollar amount. Benczkowski said the fact that wealthier residents pay more taxes in total is also unfair.

    “That’s not fair either though, that they’re carrying the burden of the taxes, that their neighborhood is versus another neighborhood,” she said.

    When asked specifically if there is a difference between being equal and being equitable when it comes to taxes, Benczkowski responded that:

    “I would have to argue though that the people in the [low-to-moderate income] areas, do get more exemptions than people that don’t. So they have an advantage also that somebody that’s not considered [low-to-moderate income who] doesn’t get the [School Tax Relief] or some of the income-based exemptions.”

    Kenneth Young, who spoke at the meeting and is the president of a local neighborhood group, the Town Park Community Association, said he couldn’t get a satisfactory answer about why the resolution to cancel the reassessments took months to appear.

    Supporters of the resolution to cancel the assessments claimed that doing so would help seniors and fixed- and low-income residents, but Young didn’t buy that explanation.

    “The only thing that they say is they’re doing this to help us,” Young said. “You’re not helping me.”

    He viewed the move as a political one, a move to satisfy voters in the south and east parts of town as an election looms in which three of the four board members who voted to end the reassessments — Benczkowski, Hammer and Councilwoman Christine Adamczyk — are up for re-election.

    Further, some residents who spoke at the meeting, as well as Nowak and Kaminski, alluded to the fact, in varying degrees of bluntness, that the neighborhoods in the north and west are where the majority of Cheektowaga’s minority residents live.

    Young, who is black, was hesitant to bring up the racial component, but said it was hard to ignore.

    “It is what it is,” Young said. “North Cheektowaga, everybody west of Union [Road], that’s where the majority of minorities live. It always seems that minorities on that side of town get screwed.”

    Kaminski, the other no vote on the resolution, warned that the town was putting off an admittedly difficult decision for a later day, or, in his words, “kicking the can down the road.” Further, he didn’t think putting off the decision to reassess would help residents.

    “This was a four-year contract, so if we do nothing for the next four years, these people are still going to be penalized with higher taxes than they should be paying,” he said.

    Properties would continue to be working from different assessment years, creating a case of a system that perpetually advantages some neighborhoods at the cost of others. Kaminski said although he lives in the southern part of town, one of the wealthier neighborhoods in Cheektowaga, he felt the system has been and continues to be unfair.

    “I live south of Broadway. I’ve been there since 1964. … I don’t think I should have to pay more than somebody else does, but I don’t think I have a right to pay less either,” he said.

    Councilmember Brian Pilarski, who voted to cancel the project, admitted that he voted for the original contracts without having all the information he needed. It was a sentiment Benczkowski reiterated after the meeting when pressed on why the cancellation took months to materialize.

    “We didn’t ask the right questions at the time. It probably was a busy time in the spring. Things were heated up with all the new road reconstruction. We were trying to get that drainage project done. There were a whole bunch of other factors, and I take fault in that. I don’t mind saying that.

    However, the recent budget requests from the assessor’s office for the upcoming year, which showed a higher monetary impact than she initially expected, gave Benczkowski pause and caused her to bring the matter back to the board.

    Two reassessment contracts were originally awarded in April to Emminger, Newton, Pigeon & Magyar Inc. and GAR Associates, with the former handling residential properties and the latter taking on commercial properties. At an earlier September meeting, a resolution to cancel the commercial reassessments was pulled from the agenda, meaning those will go forward.

    According to Nowak, those commercial property assessments will show a decline in values, meaning regardless of what the board decided on the matter of residential reassessments, that piece of the tax levy pie would grow. In other words, residents would bear more of the tax burden by percentage than their commercial counterparts because of falling retail values.

    Additionally, just because the residential piece was nixed, doesn’t mean the town gets totally off the hook financially.

    At least $100,000 worth of the residential project — whose original, four-year contract totaled an estimated $400,000 — is already done. The town will not be recovering that money. Further, the town had planned to seek near-guaranteed state reimbursements, which could be worth up to $87,000, but that opportunity evaporates now that the project has been ended.

    Despite the decision to cancel the contract, opponents of reassessing this year said they knew it had to be done and wanted to revisit the discussion in the next fiscal year, which was a sentiment expressed leading into the current fiscal year.

    Pilarski said he viewed the move to cancel the contract as a pause, rather than a full stop, but Nowak expressed doubt the issue would return to the board docket anytime in the near future.

    The board will meet next at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 8, in the Council Chambers of Town Hall, 3301 Broadway. A work session will be held at 5 p.m. in the same location.

    Georgia L Schlager

  2. #77
    Tony Fracasso - Admin
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    What a crock of crap

    “Moving forward, Cheektowaga needs to consider all of its residents and all of their income levels when deciding to do assessments,” she said. “We would hate for Cheektowaga to begin to tax out our lower-income families, which are currently the communities paying the most, the higher percentage right now.”
    If this was the case then we should start looking into privatization of all services to generate a base line for negotiations.

    If this was the case raises would stop including covering all cost increases for health care while the town loses population. It's not like we are paying employees minimum wage. Many are compensated well into 6 figures when you add up the entire compensation package.


    "We would hate for Cheektowaga to begin to tax out our lower-income families"

    The Cheektowaga Democrats have been doing this for the last 20+ years.

  3. #78
    Member leftWNYbecauseofBS's Avatar
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    “Moving forward, Cheektowaga needs to consider all of its residents and all of their income levels when deciding to do assessments,”

    HAHAHAHAHA This woman is a moron. That's not how property taxes work. That's just a poor person, likely because they are stupid, trying to get out of paying taxes. Income levels are considered for....wait for it....it's coming....income taxes.

  4. #79
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    This is a classic example of how elected officials use the assessment racket to set taxpayer against taxpayer and divert their attention from the real cause of tax unfairness, the ever upward spiraling tax levy used to give favors to unions and friends of the town board. All reassessment does is spread in a different pattern the pain of of taxes which are too high in the first place.

  5. #80
    Member gorja's Avatar
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    In my narrow minded view, to reach fair assessments for all residential properties, reassessments should have been done on all residential properties or none.
    Reassessing only certain neighborhoods reeks of unfairness, IMHO.

    Georgia L Schlager

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