GUILDERLAND — The school board here learned on Tuesday, the district will owe Crossgates Mall $4.4 million after the court’s most recent finding.

Since the town of Guilderland underwent property revaluation, the school district has drained its reserve for tax certiorari cases, having spent $5.7 million on court-ordered refunds already.  

“We have some resolution in the Crossgates case that’s not fully finalized yet,” the district’s assistant superintendent for business, Andrew Van Alstyne, told the board on March 12.

With a March 6 ruling, Guilderland and Crossgates Mall laid to rest a three-year-old tax lawsuit that will save the mall about $7 million in property taxes, as The Enterprise detailed on March 7.

Crossgates has been facing financial difficulties since the start of the pandemic. In July 2020, amid the early months of COVID and a state-imposed shutdown, Crossgates’ appraised value was lowered from $470 million to $281 million. This March, that number was lowered once again, this time to $167 million.

Not long after the start of COVID, the mall stopped paying its mortgage, which led to a default on $242 million in loans, which led to the subsequent auctioning of the debt. The loans were scooped up by Morgan Stanley and a Connecticut-based investment bank for $174 million, leading to an approximately $98 million loss for bondholders.

Van Alstyne displayed a table for the board, showing the mall’s original assessment in 2020 at about $282.5 million, decreasing to an updated assessment of $177 million, set by the judge on March 6 for 2022, 2023, and 2024.

The school district has to make a total refund of $4,357,292, with the interest to date at $347,281, Van Alstyne said on Tuesday.

The district’s 2023-24 budget includes $1.6 million towards what is owed with the balance to be bonded and paid back over a number of years.

“Interest is accruing at $833 a day,” Van Alstyne said. “So we want to move to repay this. This is one of the advantages for paying this now versus going through the appeals process … Any gains we were to make through the appeals process would have to be set against what we know we would be accumulating in interest.”

He went on to explain why the district has chosen to bond for the refund.

“The idea is to meet our obligation without compromising any cohort of students,” said Van Alstyne. “So not this year’s students, not next year’s students, and not over the next 10 years. It is to spread this out to minimize the impact on the district and our students.”

“I'd rather see money go to our students versus go to Crossgates,” said the school board president, Seema Rivera. 

“I have only one board meeting left,” said Rivera, who is leaving the Guilderland board to serve on the state’s Board of Regents. “I strongly suggest that we advocate to get a seat at the table at the town because, if the school is impacted by how the taxes are done in the town, I feel like the school board should have a seat there in making those decisions.”

She volunteered to write an email, making that request.

“They’re elected board members,” Superintendent Marie Wiles pointed out of the town council.

Wiles suggested that, when Guilderland next undergoes town-wide property revaluation, “That’s the time to have a part in the conversation. I’m not sure when that’s going to happen. I think, given the experience of the most recent one, it might be a little while.”

On Feb. 1, The Enterprise editorialized on the school district’s dilemma and advocated for the town to undertake revaluation as well as advocating for the state to adopt a single enforced standard of assessment.

At some point,” Guilderland Supervisor Peter Barber said in his Feb. 14 state-of-the-town address, “we’ll have to get into that ugly word of reval.”

Guilderland had moved to full-value assessment in 1980 and had at first conducted townwide revaluations every four or five years. But it had a gap of 13 years before it revalued in 2005, leading to a stream of tax challenges.

Wiles went on, telling the board on Tuesday, “An Enterprise article captured it perfectly. You know, the school district felt the brunt of all those tax claims. And we're just fortunate that, and I think they quoted me in saying, ‘I’m just delighted we're not standing here last week making $5 million worth of cuts if we had to pay the whole thing at once.’”

“I mean it’s crazy,” rejoined Rivera. “We’re asking for things for our kids … nothing exorbitant. And then … we have to send money to Crossgates. I think it’s insane.”