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SCHOHARIE COUNTY
Flood victims face tax dilemma Governments can ignore relief act
BY EDWARD MUNGER JR. Gazette Reporter

    Four weeks after they gained the option of slashing taxes on property ripped apart by tropical storms, many municipalities still aren’t sure if they want to take that step.
    It’s a choice between two bad options, local officials say: make fl ood victims pay full taxes on homes that may no longer even exist, or cut the assessments and suffer a major loss of tax revenue at a time when expenses are already higher due to the late-summer fl ooding.
    One of the vic- gazette.com tims being asked to pay up is Bonnie Fewtrell, who returned to her property on Priddle Road in September to fi nd nothing.
    Her home was gone, along with a barn where she and her partner kept donkeys and chickens.
    Not long afterward, a school tax bill came in the mail with a deadline for full payment based on the property’s value established months before.
    “The land is gone. It’s now creek bed,” Fewtrell said, noting about 45 feet of her yard was washed away by the Schoharie Creek, swollen to historic proportions by Tropical Storm Irene.
    “We were paying taxes and there wasn’t anything left. At the end of the year here, we just got our [county] property taxes and I thought this is ridiculous, this is absolutely ridiculous,” Fewtrell said Friday.
    Fewtrell is one of hundreds of property owners who could either get some help under a state law or be ignored.
    School district and local government boards are facing a diffi cult decision that needs to be made by next month: they can agree to help property owners with major fl oodrelated losses by changing their assessments or they can ignore the state’s Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee Assessment Relief Act.
    The flood assessment relief act, signed into law Dec. 9, allows schools, towns, counties and other collectors of property taxes to change the assessments for taxpayers whose homes and properties lost at least 50 percent of their value in the storms.
    For example, if a $150,000 house was reduced to an empty lot worth $20,000, the homeowner could be taxed on the $20,000 lot, rather than the $150,000 house — if the taxing entity agrees to the change. Otherwise, the homeowner must pay 2012 taxes on the $150,000 house that no longer exists.
    As it stands now, people are being taxed based on their property assessments certified back in March 2011.
    That was more than fi ve months before places like the Priddle Road neighborhood in Esperance were reduced to piles of broken cinder blocks and skeletons of homes crushed up against trees.
    Participation would mean providing a refund to those who already paid their tax bill.
DEADLINE LOOMS
    The law calls for participating entities to pass a resolution expressing their intent within 45 days of the bill’s approval, meaning the deadline is Feb. 23.
    The Schoharie Central School District’s Board of Education could make a decision Jan. 18, one that holds repercussions for both flooded district residents and those unscathed, Superintendent Brian Sherman said.
    There are about 1,030 district homes above the regular fl ood plain that could have sustained damage in the flooding, and it’s unclear how many would qualify with a loss in value of 50 percent or more.
    A worst-case scenario would mean as much as $1.7 million in tax revenue the district would have to refund, Sherman said, or as little as $500,000.
    “Obviously we’re going to lose revenue and we would have to give that money back,” he said.
    Officials are already anticipating a massive reduction in taxable value for next year in light of the loss in properties, making this decision particularly diffi cult because non-impacted residents “would have to pick up the difference,” Sherman said.
    The school district might be able to participate, though, if the Board of Education decides to tap into the district’s tax certiorari reserve, he said.
    The district has been saving money in the event it loses legal action filed by the Iroquois Gas pipeline company looking to reduce its assessment, and there’s roughly $2.5 million in that account.
    “Will it hurt? Absolutely. Is it good for our impacted families? Absolutely. The public’s hurt. It is really hurt,” Sherman said.
    At the town level, Schoharie Town Supervisor Gene Milone said the flood assessment relief act is nothing more than “feel-good legislation” for the state government.
    “They go and pass these kinds of bills with no financial support. How does the town compensate for the revenue loss? They’re not saying ‘here’s a million bucks,’ ” he said.
    “The towns can’t absorb it, they just can’t.”
    Milone said he doesn’t have fi gures that would detail the impact of taking part in the relief act — he believes offi cials haven’t bothered getting estimates due to the massive fi nancial impact.
    “We’ll have to discuss it,” he said.
    Relieving taxes for flooded property owners in the village of Middleburgh would mean losing a “sizeable amount,” Mayor William Ansel-McCabe said.
    Tax revenue makes up about a third of the village’s $750,000 budget, McCabe said, and giving flooded property owners a break would only mean asking remaining residents to fill in the gap.
    “They’re trying to help us any way they can, the ones that are still standing, so to speak,” he said. “If you take anything away, it’s going to increase our tax rate.”
    Schoharie County Board of Supervisors Chairman Harold Vroman said he hasn’t yet heard much discussion about taking part in the act; he said he was contacting other supervisors to see if it might be discussed at the county board’s next meeting Jan. 20. ...........................>>>>..........................>>>>....................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r00102&AppName=1

better yet....drive out the owners who cant live there....hell,,,I'd pack up and leave...move on....let someone who has the capital---fix it.......oh, wait,,,,how about a HOMETOWN BANK....hahahahahahaha......not a government
entity but a local hometown bank that wants to help the reinvestment of the hometown........

WHERE IN THE HECK DO THESE REPORTERS GET THEIR BRAINS????????????????????????????????????????

The reduction of assessment will NOT, I repeat NOT result in loss of revenue!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!       Of course, this is a Gazette "reporter."    Just like when Smoking Bananas (another posrter with no intelligence) claimed property values in Schenectady were up simply based on what some reporter wrote which wasw total error, and to this day SB has not provided one shred of proof with numbers from GCAR's website itself that subtantiates what the reporter wrote.

A reduction in the assessed value simply means the rest of the taxpayers make up the difference of the loss.   Can the rest of the taxpyaers afford it?   Obviously not, however, the rest of the taxpayers COULD afford it IF the dems would remove all prorperty taxe exemptions for downtown properties.   IF they did that, it would substantially lower the tax rate which, in this case, WOULD result in lower tax BILLS, and that is the total truth even if the tax LEVY stayed the same.


In terms of the city, there are the financially struggling homeowenrs who pay just about the highest taxes in the whole USA, who have suffered great losses, so, would McC  care about them and help them out?    Of course NOT.   McC and the rest of the dems ONLY lower taxable assessment on their millionaire buddies downtown, and to hell with the rest of the city.   That IS the dems' leaders attitudes.

These homeonwers struggle and now they suffer this loss, but they STILL must foot the bill for the property taxes of the millionaires downtown, because the dems refuse to make the millioniares pay their taxes.  

correct.....it's the LEVY......