By Liz McBreen
At a press conference on June 10, O'Shea outlined the alleged errors made by the commission and called for Borin's resignation. The assessor charges the ARC with granting exorbitant reductions to homeowners all over Nassau County who filed challenges on their reassessments.
O'Shea (R-North Merrick) says these "incorrect" reductions were discovered when the assessor's office began putting its annual assessment roll update together. As part of the reassessment project, O'Shea and his team will have to appear in court and make these regular updates for six years from when the assessment began.
When the ARC turned over its first group of challenge settlements to the Board of Assessors, O'Shea and his team found problems with many of the reductions that were granted. "A careful review by my department of over 24,000 reductions made by the ARC has shown that Mr. Suozzi's appointed Assessment Review Commission is threatening the fairness in property assessment which started with reassessment," said O'Shea. "This commission, led by Commissioner Glenn Borin, has failed an open-book test in assessment fairness, and their failure will result in a shift of millions of dollars in tax obligation to other property owners."
The assessor's office looked into a sampling of about 2,000 of these "subject sales," and believes it has found a trend of superfluous reductions. A "subject sale" occurs when a homeowner challenges the previous year's reassessment on a home that has been sold within the past three years.
Because the home was recently sold, its fair market price can be calculated by "trending forward with a conservative 1 percent per month appreciation," according to O'Shea. Of the 2,046 homes sampled by the assessor's office, 58 percent were reduced to below this trended sale price, and 152 were below the price at which the home was sold.
Two months ago, O'Shea met with County Executive Thomas Suozzi, who appointed the members of the ARC, and the assessor told Suozzi of the faulty reductions. O'Shea asked the executive to "take aggressive action." Since he has not yet seen any changes made, O'Shea decided to call for Borin's resignation.
The assessor explained his feeling that the review committee is not taking the reassessment process seriously. He gave examples of Nassau County homes and the reductions that were granted to homeowners after they had challenged their reassessment. A home in Woodmere that sold for $545,000 in September 2001 was reassessed at $526,000 last year. When the homeowners challenged this assessment, ARC reduced it to $477,000. The home is now worth $626,000, and O'Shea believes the tax burden that the owners of the home are to be spared will now be passed on to their neighbors and other homeowners in the same school district. "This is a reversal of the trend of fairness," said O'Shea. "The Assessment Review Commission has failed the people of Nassau County."
A similar situation has occurred with the 62 "upper-end property" homeowners who challenged their assessments. Upper-end properties are homes assessed at $1 million or more. Last year, a Kings Point home was reassessed at $1.6 million, and the ARC has since reduced its value to $1.2 million, a reduction of 25 percent.
O'Shea has vowed to keep an eye on what happens at the ARC. "[Borin] is not working on behalf of homeowners, and no one has been checking to make sure these numbers make sense," he said. "I have to defend homeowners in Nassau County." The assessor's office is not yet aware of how the ARC is calculating the reductions. O'Shea stated that incompetence is the only reason for these mistakes. "We cannot find any rhyme or reason to these numbers," he said.
It is estimated that almost 80,000 challenges are yet to be settled, and O'Shea fears that if the trend continues, the entire reassessment project could be in jeopardy. "The negligence of those cases examined in my department's initial review has undermined the court-ordered reassessment project and has compromised the validity of the assessment roll in general," he said.
According to O'Shea, almost $20 million in taxes has been shifted from those who received reductions to other homeowners in the same jurisdiction. To complete a fair reassessment process, the assessor's office now has to adjust the reductions the ARC has made to reconcile them with fair market prices and try to "recapture the value of these homes."
Borin failed to return phone calls from the Herald asking for comment on O'Shea's accusations, but in a letter sent to O'Shea in May, the chairman stated that he believed the commission had repaired many of the errors made by Cole Layer Trumble, the Ohio-based contractor charged with completing the reassessments, in valuing properties as of January 1, 2002 instead of January 1, 2003. Borin also said in the letter that he believed O'Shea's study contained numerous mathematical errors.
Harvey Levinson, who will be running against O'Shea for the office of Assessor in November, said he "respectfully disagrees with O'Shea's conclusions," believing that the challenge petitions were reviewed and reassessments were reduced in an independent and objective manner.
"Mr. Borin recognized as one of the most fair and honest appraisers in the industry," said Levinson. "He (O'Shea) politicized the process. In order for the reassessment process to work, there has to be a dialogue between the Assessor's office and the review committee. This will make for a difficult partnership," said Levinson.
He went on to say that there were more reassessment challenges in Nassau County than in the rest of New York State combined. "This was supposed to end the confusion, and the public is right back where they started. People are still frustrated."
