Last week, the governor signed into law two bills that will help with the tax crisis that arose in Guilderland this past year. We commend Democratic Assemblywoman Patricia Fahy and Republican Senator George Amedore for working together on these bills.

With such deep political rifts on the federal level, it’s heartening to see our elected state representatives from both sides of the aisle working together for the good of the citizens they represent.

Further, we commend the town of Guilderland for undertaking the arduous task of town-wide property revaluation. As we’ve urged in this space for years, municipalities should undergo that process once every five years.

We know it’s expensive. We know it’s politically painful — but it is necessary. There is no other way to insure that each homeowner or business owner is paying his or her fair share of taxes.

Because Guilderland hadn’t conducted a townwide revaluation since 2005 — 13 years ago — the state used a process of small random sampling that the town believed was unfair.

After learning of the precipitous drop in the town’s equalization rate — from 88 to 76 percent — Guilderland made an appeal in August before the state’s Office of Real Property Tax Service Board.

Guilderland’s commercial sample had been based on just five properties: Stuyvesant Plaza, the Hampton Inn, and three apartment complexes.

“There is a disconnect,” Laurence Farbstein, president of Industrial & Utility Valuation Consultants, argued before the ORPTS board for Guilderland a year ago. When regional trends show a 1-percent adjustment factor, he said, it makes no sense that Guilderland’s commercial properties were valued at $935 million in 2015 and $1.26 billion in 2017 — an increase of 35 percent.

“Either the trend bears no relationship to what’s happening in a community or … the selection process and the way the properties are chosen have skewed the numbers,” Farbstein said.

In responding for the state, Paul Miller noted that the town of Guilderland includes Crossgates Mall. He said that, at one time, “20 percent of retail in the Capital District was going through that mall.” Miller said further that, since the owner of that property won’t provide data, “we have to select other property.”

To ignore Guilderland’s major commercial center simply because the owners of Crossgates Mall won’t cooperate, clearly highlights the problem: New York needs a state law with enforcement teeth.

Unlike most states, New York has no law requiring revaluation at certain intervals.

What Fahy and Amedore’s bills did was supply Band-Aids for a gaping wound.

Residents on the edges of the town, with properties in school districts other than Guilderland, were hard hit this year. Guilderland property owners in the Voorheesville and South Colonie school districts saw tax hikes of 12 percent; in the Schalmont district, almost 17 percent; and in the Mohonasen district, close to 19 percent.

Meanwhile, in the Guilderland district, the rate change was up 1.6 percent while residents of other towns in that district saw dramatic decreases.

One of the two newly-signed bills will create special segmented equalization rates for those living on the hard-hit edges of Guilderland, giving residents some relief until the town completes revaluation in 2019.

The second bill will improve transparency in the rate-setting process by informing municipal officials of problems earlier in the process. A third bill — which awaits the governor’s signature — would require final equalization rates be set at least 30 days prior to the levy of taxes.

But a state-wide, rather than a stop-gap, change is needed.

The same sort of common sense and courage that is needed by local officials to fairly value property in their towns is now needed by state leaders.

The very board charged with hearing challenges from municipalities believes the current process is flawed. Matthew Rand, who chaired the board conducting Guilderland’s hearing last year, concluded, “Everyone acknowledges it’s a flawed process but it’s the process we have right now in place … No one’s got the exact value of any of these properties, so it’s a little bit of a cat-and-mouse game as far as what should the value of those properties be.”

The state needs a common requirement for full-value assessment. Miller said that having New York allow each individual municipality to set its own assessment level was a “nightmare scenario.” He went on, “We have 1,000 jurisdictions. We let them set their own assessments. Most states have a single standard of assessment.”

The state must do away with the “nightmare scenario” and must set a single standard of assessment that is enforced statewide. This will reduce the burden for the state workers who now deal with 1,000 different standards.

It will save residents from skewed tax rolls and unequal burdens. It will take the heat off of local officials who, as in Westerlo, have not made the commitment to fairly assess property. Westerlo has not revalued properties for decades and the state-set equalization rate there is less than 1 percent of full-market value; this leaves newcomers with an unbelievably unfair tax burden.

In the end, a single enforceable will guarantee that residents across the state are each paying their fair share of taxes.

If Fahy and Amedore, a Democratic assemblywoman and a Republican senator — can work together for the good of Guilderland residents, why can’t our representatives from across the state work together to fix this system, once and for all, for all New Yorkers?
— Melissa Hale-Spencer