[site note: publication of this post was delayed do to technical issues]
A few weeks ago I wrote about the unfair taxing practices being conducted by the Grant Township Assessor’s Office on private Wooster Lake: how some gain by the favorable assessments from the Assessor and how some therefore lose by paying for those who are not paying their fair share.
The Assessor’s own numbers show Tanneron Bay property owners are the ones benefiting, with their assessments being lowered so much that their taxes since 2005 have stayed flat or are even lower. Meanwhile everyone else on the lake is paying significantly higher taxes than they did in 2005, where further investigation reveals that their property assessments are as much as 2x, maybe 3x that of the real market value.
Pulled from the Assessor’s own website are the figures from 2005-2014 for property 05-23-401-008, one of the Wooster Lake properties listed as restricted on recording #5094179. The property is a combination of an upland and lake bed property, all with no home on it. Just property. (The house allegedly burned down some 3-4 decades ago.) The property has from 2005-2014 essentially remained idle. Yet the taxes have more than doubled in that time frame.
This while properties at Tanneron Bay have remained flat or lower in that same time period because favorable assessments from the Grant Office have been lowered so drastically.
It turns out my research shows one particular family – the Scully’s – owned this property 05-23-401-008 for the last several decades until 2009, and paid their taxes every year through 2009. But the rising taxes apparently became so unaffordable and rose at such an incredibly steep incline, the family stopped paying the taxes beginning in 2010.
Records show they didn’t pay in 2011, 2012, or 2013. They appeared to give up and just walk away from their own property. A buyer saw the opportunity, paid the back taxes, and voilà , by December 2014 the multi-decade-owners of 05-23-401-008 are legally out of their lake property.
Nothing at all against the buyer who was within his/her rights to make such a legal purchase. That’s not the point. The new owner however has been unsuccessfully trying to sell this lake property for $99,900, listed on the market since February 2015. Not being able to sell for several months, the real market value for the property is no more than that $99,900. And that’s the point.
www.robertefrankrealestate.com/#!34374-n-converse/c129p
Compare the Assessor’s assessed value of that same property in 2014: the assessment of $195,393 is nearly double the maximum, real market value! That assessed value is what the Assessor taxed at, the value she asssessed. Previous years when the property was with the Scully’s reveal assessments were even worse, taxing at those even higher assessed values.
Anyone can easily see by the numbers the family was over-assessed, over-taxed, to the point where the historical tax-paying owners could no longer afford to keep their own property.
It seems ethically wrong if the family lost their property, especially after owning it and paying taxes on it for decades.
It is still unclear to me why Tanneron Bay residents are paying the same amount in property taxes now as they did in 2005 – while other lake residents are paying 2X to 3X more – why their properties are over-assessed (2X) what they are truly worth. I doubt that Tanneron Bay residences have depreciated so severely that their tax amount remains the same as in 2005.
Tom Holmes
-Lake County resident
