Residents file lawsuit against Assessors Office

Aug. 11, 2016 | G. Michael Dobbs
news@thereminder.com

SPRINGFIELD – There is a billboard site on West Columbus Avenue where the property tax value of the billboards was $800,000 and the land value was at $116,400 in 2011. It has since changed to a value of $2.3 million for the billboards and $50,000 for land in 2015.

Russ Seelig wants to know why the value of the land has decreased so radically when logic would demand it shouldn’t. He believes under-evaluations are happening throughout the city for billboard and cell towers and the city is leaving $2 million in property taxes on the table.

“The assessors’ charge is to get as much tax revenue as they can and they’re failing to do that,” Seelig asserted. He added the mayor appoints the members of the Board of Assessors.

Seelig and a group of city residents want to know the answers and are going to court to find out.

Seelig has tried to several times to understand why there are discrepancies between how commercial properties such as apartment buildings are taxed and how billboards and cell towers are taxed.

A simple conversation hasn’t happened. “They won’t talk with me,” Seelig told Reminder Publications.

A group of close to 20 residents joined Seelig in bringing a suit forward, which he filed in 2013. He believes the pre-trail conferences would be in November with the trial in December.

He said an out-of-court settlement would be “the ideal solution.”

Seelig added, “We would enjoy that very much.”

In written materials supplied to Reminder Publications, Seelig wrote, “One glaring example of a billboard parcel valuation discrepancy is that the defendants [the Board of Assessors] value a one-billboard (one face) site the same as a two- billboard site when all rational valuation procedures would make a significant distinction between the two.

“And for cell tower site valuations a similar discrepancy is evident – a tower is a tower is a tower, according to the defendants, whether it is a 190-foot lattice structure or a flag pole or how many arrays (levels of antennae) or number of antennae in total (the source of income for a tower).  They are all valued as though they have three arrays whereas three-array towers are in the minority in the city.  As you move around the city, compare the one near the North End Bridge that has four arrays to the one at the Boys and Girls Club on Carew that has two arrays to the one on St James near Tapley, with no arrays – all valued the same!”

Seelig’s interest in the matter came about when he volunteered for the city and worked with Building Code Commissioner Steve Desilets in 2005. He did so, he explained, because the department’s staff had been “decimated” due to cutbacks. Desilets was looking for ways to increase revenue and was able to raise the cost of building permits.

This led Seelig into questioning the way billboards are taxed. He wrote, “At that time, the typical I-91 billboard monopole (two faces) had a potential gross income of $216,000 yet its ad valorem valuation was only $11,000.  That seemed grossly out line compared to my apartment building with a similar gross annual income that had an ad valorem valuation of about $600,000.  I was paying about 25 times as much property tax as a monopole!”

Seelig explained he took the matter to the Finance Control Board and eventually the value was raised from $11,000 to $200,000 where it stood for six years.

“Investment properties fly under the radar,” Seelig said of the issue.

He wondered, “What other investment properties are they playing games with?”

City Solicitor Edward Pikula said the litigation is on-going and “at the completion of discovery we expect to file a motion to have the case dismissed.”

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