City Council considers suing Crawford County to force reassessment

Jul. 14—Property tax reassessment: The mundane, some might say boring, task performed regularly by county governments across the country, but left largely unattended to by Crawford County's leaders for more than half a century.

At a Meadville City Council study session Wednesday, countywide property reassessment was portrayed first as a long-sought Holy Grail that could correct taxing inequities affecting people throughout the county, but especially those who own property in the city; and then as a wrongheaded exercise in tilting at windmills that would result only in costly tax increases for all of the county's property owners, including the city property owners some think would benefit.

The opposing views began with a presentation of nearly 30 minutes by Michael Musone, an attorney from the city's law firm, that might serve as a rough draft for an opening statement if the city were to sue Crawford County in order to force the county to conduct its first reassessment since 1969.

Crawford has gone longer than any other county in the state without conducting a full-blown reassessment. In 1985, the values were updated by applying a flat multiplier of 2.7 across the board, but no true assessment was conducted.

Though the state's constitution requires uniformity of taxation, Musone told the four City Council members present, the failure to conduct periodic reassessments tends to result in wildly divergent property valuations, with some owners paying much more than they should and others paying far less.

Quoting from the conclusion of a mass appraisal report commissioned by Knox Law Firm on the state of Crawford County's property assessments, Musone said, "Properties are generally dramatically under assessed and assessed values are greatly non-uniform.

"Assessed values have simply become too untethered to market value, resulting in a property tax base that will result in an unfair distribution of the property tax burden," Musone continued in quoting the report's conclusion. "It is long past time for a new reassessment in Crawford County."

When assessments become "untethered" from reality, according to Musone, the resulting inefficiency hurts the county as a whole, but the burden falls disproportionately on the owners of lower-value properties who often lack the resources to seek reassessment on an individual basis.

Councilman Jim Roha has been making the argument that a disproportionately high number of over-assessed properties are located in the city since shortly after he was elected in 2017. Musone's presentation, in fact, covered much of the same ground that Roha covered in a 2019 presentation of his own.

"Bottom line," Roha said Wednesday, "some of our assessments in Meadville are 30 to 40 to 50 times what they should be in terms of land value."

In many cases, the assessments of land value — which does not include the value of improvements in the form of houses or other structures — produce similar results for what Musone called "a postage-stamp lot" in the city of Meadville and shore-front properties on Conneaut Lake.

"Everybody in this room knows lakefront properties are worth a heck of a lot more than a postage-stamp lot in the city of Meadville — but they're not taxed that way," Musone said. In effect, he added later, city property owners "are subsidizing those lakefront property owners."

Redress is available. Roha noted that he had benefited by appealing the assessment of his home some years ago.

But the process can be costly, making the owners of lower-value properties less likely to spend the initial sums required in order to achieve a tax break that might not recoup the expenses for years, according to Musone.

"They shouldn't have to pay for something the government has an obligation to provide," Roha said.

Musone stressed the unfairness that results from the aging base assessment used by the county and suggested that a costly process that will result in higher tax rates for about one-third of property owners could be a hard sell for politicians.

"The city has a responsibility to make sure that people are paying their fair share of taxes," he said. "If the county is not willing to do that, the city should consider forcing the county to do that."

Only one member of the public attended the Wednesday meeting, but it was exactly the audience that council members seemed interested in reaching: Eric Henry, chairman of the Crawford County Board of Commissioners.

During a public comment period following the presentation, Henry approached the conference room's lectern like a defense attorney ready to rebut, point by point, previous arguments and reinterpret facts submitted into evidence.

The prospect of Meadville suing Crawford County to force a reassessment did not appeal to Henry, who pointed out that the Knox Law Firm, rather than the county or the city, stood to benefit directly from such legal action.

But Henry, who has heard the arguments in favor of reassessment numerous times before, said the reason Crawford County leaders like him have not addressed reassessment is not political but financial. The money and effort that would be required for suing the county, according to Henry, would be better spent convincing state legislators to reform the state's property tax system.

Regarding the current system, Henry offered clarification on how old it is, pointing out that the 1969 assessment values were modified in 1985. He also argued against the idea that the current system does not meet the state constitution's requirement for uniformity. Henry said the county's assessment process is the same for all property owners and thus meets constitutional muster.

In the end, Henry said, the question of whether or not to fund the cost of reassessment "is not difficult."

"For me, it's really not political, it's financial," he said. "We just don't have the money — we don't have the money to do it."

Henry estimated the cost to reassess the county's more than 61,000 parcels of property at about $70,000 per parcel. At that rate, a countywide reassessment would cost about $4.3 million, though Henry pegged the cost at $5 million to $6 million.

At that rate, he said, Crawford County would have to raise its tax rate about 20 percent in order to afford the project. And if it happened, the end result would not be the panacea some might make it out to be.

"You can argue fairness all day long with reassessment," he acknowledged in adding a note of caution. "Will it solve your debt problem? Will it solve your issues you have with city-level finance? Nope, it's not going to solve it."

Mayor Jaime Kinder, offering a response to Henry's response, said the point of pursuing reassessment was not to raise revenue for the city.

"It is a fairness issue," Kinder said, "and we need to be doing what is best for our citizens."

Crawford County is not the only area in the state's northwest region where reassessment has drawn recent attention.

In April, the Warren County Board of Commissioners said in a press release that the county would pursue reassessment "to ensure a fair and equitable distribution of the tax burden among property owners."

"Some counties in Pennsylvania have been ordered by the court to do reassessments," the commissioners stated, "but Warren County's leaders have opted to preempt such an order to maintain favorable control over the implementation timeline."

In May, Mercer County commissioners approved a $3.8 million bid to reassess the county's 60,500 parcels. It will be the county's first reassessment since 1971.

Mike Crowley can be reached at (814) 724-6370 or by email at mcrowley@meadvilletribune.com.