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Mid Hudson Times, Wednesday, November 30, 2016
Newburgh school district to pay $360K in tax-property refunds
By SHANTAL RILEY
[email protected]
The Newburgh Enlarged City School
District will have to pay $360,000 after two
companies sued to have their property
taxes reduced in the Town and City of
Newburgh.
C & S Wholesale Grocers will receive
a $351,656 refund from the school district
following a tax-certiorari judgement
spanning 2011 through 2017; according to
the school district, Imperial Motel, located
on Broadway in the City of Newburgh,
will see a refund of $8,445 for 2014 to 2016.
Additionally, C & S will receive a $55,219
refund from the Town of Newburgh,
said Town of Newburgh Assessor Molly
Carhart. The business will also get a
$17,475 refund from the Orange Lake Fire
District and a $17,298.76 refund from the
town water districts.
These refunds follow closely on the
heels of another property-tax lawsuit
filed by Target, which operates a store
off 17K in the Target Plaza. Earlier this
year, the big-box store was awarded a tax
refund of $14,942 from the town for taxes
in 2014 through 2016.
And, there are more to come. The
Newburgh Motel on Route 9W, the Time
Plaza office building on Route 300, Citizens
Bank on Route 300, ShopRite Plaza on
North Plank Road and the Walgreens/
Key Bank building, also on North Plank
Road, are among the businesses currently
in litigation with the town over their
property assessments, Carhart said.
Last year, the town also reached a
settlement with Wal-Mart, which sued to
have the property-tax assessment for its
supercenter location on Route 300reduced
by $200,000.
Target and other big-box stores like WalMart and Lowe’s are suing municipalities
across the country using the “dark store”
tax theory, permitting tax assessments of
big-box stores as if they were vacant.
“Your big, national retailers, like
Wal-Mart, they sue pretty much every
chance they can,” said Todd Wiley,
former president of the New York State
Assessors’ Association and tax assessor
for the Town of New Windsor. “It’s just
the way they do business.”
Municipalities that have a large
number of commercial properties, such
as the Town of Newburgh and the Town
of New Windsor, normally see more taxassessment lawsuits, Wiley said. “It’s the
law of averages,” said the assessor. “The
more significant commercial properties
you have, the more tax-certiorari
C & S Wholesale Grocers sued to have property taxes reduced at its location on Corporate Blvd. in the Town of Newburgh.
litigation.”
The bulk of property taxes - about 70
percent, said Wiley – go to school districts.
“If someone is paying $10,000 in property
taxes, $7,000 is going to the school district,”
he explained, and that is why school
districts must pay refunds in propertytax settlements. “Approximately half of
the (school district) budget comes from
state aid, etcetera, and half comes from
the property-tax levy.”
When businesses sue over property
tax assessments, it has a direct effect on
the school district. “They typically have
a fund dedicated for these tax refunds,”
Wiley said. However, he notes, “the
money was raised from the tax payers.”
“They cut the check for the refund and,
simultaneously, the assessment for the
property has been reduced,” Wiley said.
Taxes for that property will go down for
the years covered in the settlement, he
said, and “going forward, that property
will not carry as big a piece of the tax pie
as it did in the past.”
Essentially, Wiley said, the tax burden
“gets shifted onto everybody else.”
A tax-certiorari settlement typically
freezes assessment changes for a set
number of years, Wiley explained.
However, assessments can be changed in
the case of a town-wide reassessment or
significant physical changes to a property,
he added.
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