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Part II of this series looked at some of the more eyebrow-raising examples of assessment increases doled out by Sole Assessor Garth Slocum to taxable properties in the City of Hudson in his 2010 tentative roll. Among these were a vacant lot raised over 1000%, private homes raised well over a million dollars, and a bed-and-breakfast quadrupling to $1.2 million in a single year.

This installment concerns examples of the precise opposite: Properties whose values were actually lowered by Slocum at a time when he raised assessments Citywide by 29%.

EXAMPLES OF LARGE DECREASES

1. 304 State: -68%
   Owned by former City Democratic Chair and Waterfront Advisory Steering Committee chair Linda Mussmann, this property decreased from $90,300 to $30,100 in one year. Other properties in the 200, 300 and 400 blocks of State Street went up by 8% collectively. According to Trulia.com, “this 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom home has 2,504 square feet and was built in 1860.” Mussmann owns a total of four Hudson properties; taken together, their value was raised just 1%, against that City benchmark of 29%.


2. 551 Warren: -36%
   This large and prime retail/office space is located in arguably the best block of the Hudson business district, and is owned by the 551 Warren St Corp. State corporate records show their CEO is David Crawford, principal of Crawford & Associates, which has done extensive engineering and consulting work for the City of Hudson over the years. The other 47 properties in the 500 block of Warren went up by 29% on the same tentative roll, making 551 Warren’s assessment change significantly smaller than its neighbors.


3. Front Street (109.11-1-22): -32%
   This 2.7 acre vacant commercial parcel south of the train station is owned by “R & S of Hudson, Inc.” and was reduced from $68,900 to $46,800 on the tentative roll. Other Front Street properties went up by 45% in the aggregate. R & S lists a Claverack mailing address in local property records; a Poughquag address in State corporate records; and appears to share a P.O. Box with the Hudson Handling Corp. Some speculate that R & S stands for Richard and Susan Koskey (the former of whose accounting firm has done lots of work for County government and municipalities in the area).


4. 42 Fairview: -27%
   The Chief of Staff for Assemblyman Marc Molinaro (and former Hudson Police Commissioner) Gary Graziano owns this small one family residence, the assessment of which dropped from $162,200 to $119,200.


5. 15 Parkwood: -24%
   This home is owned by Carmine (“Cappy”) Pierro, the aide to Hudson Mayor Richard Scalera, a member of the City’s Planning Commission, former Alderman and former Mayoral candidate. Its tentative assessment dropped from $183,600 to $139,200 on this year’s roll. Trulia.com lists it as a “4 bedroom, 2 bathroom home has 1,792 square feet and was built in 1930.” Pierro also owns two other properties on Parkwood, another house which was raised just 6%, and a parcel of land which was raised 125%. Overall, the three properties dropped 4%.


6. 86 Union Turnpike: -21%
   Phil Gellert, a landlord known well to many longtime Hudson residents as the operator of Northern Empire Realty, owns this two family residence. Overall, Gellert’s 17 remaining properties were raised by 19%, 10% less than the rest of the taxable parcels in the City.

In Part IV, we’ll start to look at the bigger picture—how different streets and neighborhoods within this compact (two square mile) municipality were revalued in significantly different ways.

In Part I of this series, we established a few metrics for distinguishing between reasonable revaluations from more serious tax assessment outrages in the City of Hudson by establishing a fair and objective baseline for comparison. Analysis of assessment data from 2009 and 2010 showed that:

• Citywide, the assessor has increased the value of all taxable properties by 29%.


• The average proposed increase this year in a taxable Hudson property’s value is $41,997.


• The median  proposed increase this year in a taxable Hudson property’s value is $12,600.

Now let’s take a peek at some examples of people who came in far over those benchmarks:

EXAMPLES OF MAJOR INCREASES

1. 78 Glenwood: +1,093%
   This vacant lot owned Deborah Mann of New York City went from $3,000 to $35,800. Many other land values were radically increased in the past year (despite a general lack of vacant land sales in the City), but this one represents the highest single jump.


2. 249-251 Warren: +602%
   Known as the “orange building,” this former apartment house was purchased approximately five years ago by Myron and Peggy Polenberg and turned into a loft-style single family residence. The assessment went up more than $1 million in a single year to a whopping $1,263,100—though no residential properties have sold for that much.


3. 317 Allen: +307%
   Formerly an old-age home, this property at the corner of Allen and Willard Place was converted to a bed-and-breakfast several years ago by Dini Lamot and Windle Davis. The assessment increased by $904,700, from $295,000 to $1,199,700.


4. 55-61 Allen: +243%
   This house has been owned by the Geer family for many years, and now has a tentative assessment of $480,900. Back in 1999, it was valued at just $68,000, a more than sixfold increase in the past decade.


5. 13-15 South 4th: +122%
   Once the parsonage for the 1st Presbyterian Church, the Italianate house, garden and studio of Rudy Wurlitzer and Lynn Davis suddenly shot up after more than 20 years in residence to a $1,064,700, a $584,100 increase since 2009.

It should be again noted that these increases are not just steep in terms of the raw numbers, but in relation to the rest of the City. To have a property go up from 122%-1,093% at a time when Citywide values “only” went up 29% is difficult to justify, to say the least.

There is a big difference—in Hudson, at least—between a fair assessment and an accurate one. For one property’s assessment to be fair, the valuations of similar properties have to be accurate in the same way. Otherwise, the owner of a property assessed at “full market” value winds up paying the taxes of those valued at less than full value.

In Part III, we’ll turn to properties which actually received substantial decreases even as others are being raised astronomically. Part IV will examine how assessments have changed neighborhood-by-neighborhood and street-by-street.

Controversy has erupted for the umpteenth time over property tax assessments in the City of Hudson. From plumbing contractors to bed-and-breakfast operators, many local property owners are incensed over having their tenative 2010 assessment raised in the midst of a major economic and downturn driven by a real estate crisis.

Some taxpayers have seen raises of over 50%, 100%, 200%, 300% in a single year, and in several cases over 1000% ... even as others have had their assessments reduced. Sole Assessor Garth Slocum was grilled on Tuesday night by the Common Council, and by all accounts it wasn’t pretty.

This site has obtained assessment rolls for Hudson from 1999, 2009, and 2010, and has begun to perform detailed analysis of the trends which are occurring.

In taking stock of what has occurred, it’s essential to sort out the reasonable reassessments from the genuine outrages. Clearly, some types of property are not just more (or less) valuable than others, but are increasing (or decreasing) in value at a faster rate than others.

Big problems arise, however, when such changes are drastic and wildly disproportionate. And any cold, neutral look at the data obtained does lead inevitably to the conclusion that this most recent reval—along with the overall trends over the past decade, spanning several different assessors—contains arbitrary, capricious and unfair valuations, which in effect force some residents and business owners to pay their neighbors’ taxes.

To make an objective analysis of what has happened with Hudson assessments, the first step is to find a baseline for comparison. For the purpose of this analysis, only taxable properties are considered, leaving aside properties owned by the City, County and other public or nonprofit owners who don’t pay taxes, no matter how high or low their assessment runs.

• Citywide, the assessor has increased the value of all taxable properties by 29%.

That 29% is a key figure to keep in mind as we go along, because it sets a baseline for who was raised more or less than the rest of Hudson.

If you were raised more than 29%, then your share of the local tax pie is going to increase even if the City’s budget stays the same. Below 29%, your share would likely go down if that budget remains constant. (A more likely scenario is that future budgets will continue to rise, as leaders use the increased assessments to increase spending, meaning that even those below the average will see tax increases as soon as this year.)

Another decent baseline for comparison is to determine the average and median increases in terms of actual dollar amounts. The median, our high school math teachers wanted us to remember, is different from the average. The average here is the total of everyone’s assessment divided by the total number of taxable parcels. The median is the middlemost item in a top-to-bottom list of all the taxable parcels. Anyone above the median is higher than 50% of the other property owners, anyone below it is lower than the rest.

• The average proposed increase this year in a taxable Hudson property’s value is $41,997.


• The median proposed increase this year in a taxable Hudson property’s value is $12,600.

That large (more than threefold) discrepancy between the median and average is telling, as indicates that a relatively small number of property owners are picking up the bulk of the increased tab. In other words: though 75% of property owners saw an increase, most are far under the average, meaning the big increases far outweigh the smaller ones.

So having established that baseline for comparison, the next obvious question is: Who got disproportionately whacked in this reval... and who escaped the assessor’s bat?

In the second installment of this series, we’ll take a peek at some of the big winners and losers in the 2010 round of reassessments.