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
- 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%. - 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. - 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). - 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. - 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%. - 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.