MAYVILLE - Home Depot is seeking a "significant" property tax assessment reduction for its Dunkirk store, according to Kurt Gustafson, first assistant county attorney.
To deal with the challenge, Gustafson advised members of the Administrative Services Committee last week to hire outside counsel for the county. A resolution passed the full legislature Wednesday.
According to Gustafson, the resolution will authorize the county to participate in a joint defense so that neither the town nor the county will have to "go it alone" with legal costs.
"It's a significant reduction and it's, I think, in the county's best interest to retain counsel to assist us in that challenge," Gustafson said.
The resolution authorized County Executive Greg Edwards to enter into an agreement with an attorney whom Gustafson said the county "has worked successfully with in the past" in other such Article 7 tax assessment challenges.
Home Depot's property at 3901 Vineyard Drive in Dunkirk currently has an assessment of $6,653,100. The retailer is seeking a reduction of more than $3.5 million - taking the property to a total assessment of $3,040,743.
If outside counsel is approved by the legislature, the attorney will be retained through a joint venture between the county's finance and law departments. Already, Gustafson said discussions have occurred regarding numbers and strategy in terms of what the county might consider a reasonable reduction amount.
"A lot of times we do agree to some compromise in terms of the amount of the assessment," Gustafson said. "If we do have to go to an appraisal... Appraisals are very costly, so sometimes we look at hedging our bets in terms of offsetting the costs and looking at what might be a reasonable reduction. There is consultation between Darin (Schulz, finance director), the law department and counsel, so any final decision really would be a joint agreement between all of us."
Legislator James Caflisch, R-French Creek, has been around long enough to see a number of such tax assessment challenges come before the county.
"It is to our advantage to pursue action in court just to preserve our assessments," Caflisch said during the Feb. 17 meeting. "But again, with the New York State Real Property Tax Law and the way it's written, this is one of the deficiencies of the law that needs to be worked out."
Joking that he would again take the opportunity to get on his soap box, Caflisch spoke about acquisition value assessing being a better system.
"If we had that system in place in New York state, there would have been an agreement worked out when the property was developed and a number would have been put on it," Caflisch said. "That number would have stayed until there was future improvements or sale and we would avoid a lot of costly litigation."
According to Gustafson and Schulz, this is the first time the county has had a tax assessment challenge from Home Depot - though the county has retained legal counsel for similar challenges in the past, such as when Wal-Mart and Lakewood was seeking a reduction.