Fact-checking is not as simple as it sounds: What people say is true or even believe is true, may not actually be true.

We printed a letter to the editor last week in which Victoria Vattimo stated that she and her husband challenged the assessed value of their property. She wrote that Knox Town Board member Amy Pokorny voted on the matter, which Vattimo considered unethical since Pokorny’s husband is the tax assessor.

We noted at the bottom of the letter, in an editor’s note, that a town’s Board of Assessment Review handles grievance, not the town board. We also wrote that Amy Pokorny recalled no such vote. We were unable to reach the chairman of assessment review board before we went to print.

Chairman Timothy Frederick, who has served on the Board of Assessment Review for 20 years — one of five unpaid members — was unequivocal. “Amy had nothing to do with this…It would be against the law for the town board to decide,” he said. Amy Pokorny has never served on the Board of Assessment Review.

New York has set the fourth Tuesday in every May for municipalities across the state to hold a Grievance Day where residents can challenge their assessments. On May 28, Grievance Day, 2013, the minutes from the Knox Board of Assessment Review show that owners of three properties had challenges.

The meeting was run by Frederick, and the other four board members were on hand — Joycelyn Farrar, Gerald Irwin, Val Pulliam, and Howard Zimmer.

At 6:21 p.m., Ernest Cupernall was sworn in. He and his wife, Victoria Vattimo, had bought a house and 11.2 acres at 214 Becker Rd. within the year for approximately $360,000, the minutes say; this equates to $215,900 in Knox. The existing assessment on the property was $116,000. The assessor had raised it to $170,000. Cupernall sought to reduce his assessment back to $116,000. The board deliberated and decided the value assigned by Assessor Russell Pokorny of $170,000 was fair.

“They didn’t provide any comparables,” Frederick said of Vattimo and Cupernall. “They wanted less than the sale price. How do you justify that? We couldn’t.”

We reviewed the minutes for every Knox Town Board meeting in the year 2013, thinking perhaps Vattimo had been before the town board on some other matter; she had not.

When we called Vattimo this week with this information, she continued to insist that the town board, not the board of assessment review, had voted on the assessment at 214 Becker Road and that Amy Pokorny had voted.

This simply cannot be true, so we are running a correction.

We frequently tell letter writers that they are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts. We try our best to check those facts before we publish.

We regret printing the letter last week. We had thought someone writing of her own experience established a fact; we were wrong.

We take some solace in this thought by the late Walter Lippmann: “The theory of a free press is that the truth will emerge from free reporting and free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account.”

****

As an aside, we learned some useful information about Grievance Day we’d like to pass on to our readers.

The review board members, appointed by the town board, come from various parts of Knox and have differing backgrounds.

“We do disagree sometimes; we’re supposed to,” said Frederick. “Everyone works well together.”

When residents, usually only a handful, show up on Grievance Day, review board members can help them find comparables. “We can’t fill out the form for you but we can walk you through it,” said Frederick.

He went on of citizens coming before the board, “I understand they can be nervous but they don’t need to be. Everybody [on the board] is just like them. We’re working people who like the town because it’s a nice place to live.”

He also said, “The process, in my opinion favors the taxpayers.” From 90 to 95 percent of those who challenge their assessment receive reductions, he said.

We’re always open-minded. If there are three or four comparables that are reasonable, we don’t give people a bad time,” said Frederick.

The burden is heavy. “Every time we lower one person’s taxes, we raise others,” said Frederick. “Everybody should pay their fair share and not a penny more.”

For example, when Cupernall and Vattimo took their case to small claims court and had the property value set at the original $116,000, Assessor Russell Pokorny says, to make up that difference, taxes on each Knox property went up $2.30 a year.

Currently, the state-set equalization rate for Knox is 62 percent. That means, if someone buys a home for $100,000 in Knox, it should be on the tax rolls for $62,000.

When tax rolls become skewed — nearby Westerlo, which hasn’t undergone town-wide property revaluation in decades, is a prime example of this — it leaves newcomers with an unfair burden; their properties are often assessed at the purchase price while someone with a similar property that hasn’t sold in years is paying much less in taxes.

If someone is unhappy with their assessment after Grievance Day, the matter can be taken to small claims court. “If you take it to court, you’ll always win,” said Frederick. “You’ll always beat the town.”