Quoted Text

A house divided costs taxpayer $2,000


First published in print: Thursday, February 19, 2009

The words "property assessment" have a peculiar ability to make me nod off. It can be pretty dry stuff.

     
But where property assessments become quite exciting is when you get a bill for an additional $2,000 that you know you don't owe, but you have to pay it anyway. That would wake anyone up.

That's what happened to David Castaldi, whose address on Olean Street places him in the city of Schenectady, but whose back yard is in the town of Rotterdam.

"This is someone else's mistake that I am paying for," said Castaldi, a chef at a local hotel.

The best that he can tell, this is what happened. When the town of Rotterdam hired the company GAR Associates to do a townwide reassessment in 2006, Castaldi's property was valued as if all of it, not just the backyard, was in the town of Rotterdam. That means the portion that was previously valued at $750 was suddenly listed on the tax rolls as being worth $90,000.

Between school and town taxes, he paid more than $2,500 for that backyard slice in 2008, when he normally paid about $200.

This is in addition to his regular Schenectady city and school taxes, which added up to another $2,000 or so.

So far, Castaldi's efforts to fix this situation have been frustrating.

Castaldi said that when he was first notified of the change of assessed value, he recognized the mistake and brought it to the attention of the town assessor. According to Castaldi, he was told by then-Assessor John Macejka that the error was obvious and it would be sent to GAR to be corrected.

Castaldi, who had only been a homeowner for about three years at this point, thought that it had been. But when his school tax bill arrived, he saw that he owed $1,317. His municipal tax bill was for $1,643. Both these figures were based on his back yard being assessed at $90,000.

Meanwhile, he was still paying an additional $2,000 a year for his Schenectady taxes.

And by the time his tax bills began arriving, it was too late to do anything about it. By state law, residents who want to challenge their property assessments must attend a formal grievance day in late May. Now, Castaldi wants a refund but has found there doesn't seem to be any mechanism for him to receive one.

I spoke to Macejka, who is now the assessor in the town of Guilderland. He doesn't remember Castaldi's situation in the same way.

"I never spoke to the gentleman," he said. He said that it's possible GAR Associates made a mistake, but Macejka believes that Castaldi didn't pay any attention to it until his school tax bill arrived in September of 2007, instead of when he was first notified of the change in assessment in March of that year. Furthermore, he said, he wouldn't tell a homeowner that GAR would take care of the error, because that's not how it works. "I could have fixed it myself," Macejka said.

Castaldi stands by his story, but has little hope he'll get his money back. "I learned an expensive lesson," he said.