Appeal hearings begin in Washington County reassessment
Jennifer Holleran Nusser shows a photo of her property Wednesday during an appeal hearing in Washington.
Otha Hoberek of Jefferson Township shows auxiliary assessment appeals board members, from left, Chris Jarvis, Tom Diehl and Larry Mauro, photos of his property.
Otha is not a name one hears every day.
One website gives its meaning as “little wealthy one.”
The name held a touch of irony Wednesday as the first round of property assessment appeals were under way in Washington.
“My money doesn’t go up, my pension and that,” said Otha Hoberek, 70, who lives near Eldersville in northwestern Washington County. “We’re kind of disgusted with the whole mess. If I don’t pay that (tax bill) for three years, they’d kick me out of my home.”
The retired construction worker was among the first property owners to appear before a board of appeals asking that its members lower the dollar value of his property assessment, a figure that resulted from the county’s first reassessment in 35 years.
Otha and Phyllis Hoberek learned via a mass mailing Tyler Technologies Inc., placed a value of $249,800 on their 116-acre property and 96-year-old home in Jefferson Township. They said they paid about $68,000 for it from Starvaggi Industries. The Washington County website lists the date of sale as 1997. Hoberek called it “a dead farm” and posited as $85,000 a fair assessment.
“Most of the value is in the land,” said Lawrence Mauro, appeals board member.
A 35-acre ravine for which the Hobereks paid $12,500 four years later now has a market value of $100,200, according to Tyler’s calculations.
“That’s just woods, steep hills,” Otha Hoberek testified. “You can’t do nothing with it. How they can raise it like that, I don’t know. I can’t build on it.”
He uses it as a buffer, and he said he wished he could have personally shown Tyler’s data collector the sheer cliffs above a rail line via all-terrain vehicle. He owns no mineral rights and said the best trees were felled during strip mining completed before he became the owner.
Because it’s wooded acreage, Hoberek enrolled the property in the Clean and Green preferential assessment program.
Hoberek said this was his third discussion about his property assessment.
Coming in for the second time was Susan Moskal of Centerville, whose tentative assessment last spring was $84,900 for a one-bedroom home and three lots in Denbeau Heights. She was able to reduce the assessment to $66,000 through an informal review in late March. On Wednesday, armed with photographs and information about neighboring properties, she told of her uninsulated attic and other detriments, asking the board to consider $45,000 as more realistic value. This is the figure, she said, at which her property was appraised 10 years ago for home equity purposes.
William Loar, chairing an auxiliary board of assessment appeals, told Moskal and other appellants that they should be notified of a decision in about 10 days.
“If I was to purchase that house, I wouldn’t pay more than $50,000 for it,” she said afterward.
The opening round of assessment appeals was taking place almost three years to the day that the Washington County commissioners signed a $6.9 million contract with Tyler Technologies Inc. to reassess all property in the county.
The first appellant heard at 9:03 a.m. was Jennifer Holleran Nusser, who disputed a $32,900 value placed on a lot and unoccupied, insulbrick home in Clarksville, East Bethlehem Township, that is deemed “unlivable.”
Nusser attended the hearing with her parents, Russell and Patricia Holleran, who were there to provide support.
“That’s outrageous,” said Russell Holleran after his daughter presented her case in an eight-minute proceeding before auxiliary assessment appeals board members William Loar, David Kresh and John Marcischak.
Nusser said an appraisal she obtained in 2009 from a private firm came it at $10,500 when a trailer, since removed, stood on the .9-acre tract. Adjacent to the Jennings Lane property is a stone quarry, and the dilapidated house is served by no sewer system.
Approximately 100 hearings were scheduled Wednesday, divided among five, three-person panels meeting in the Chapman Building, 351 W. Beau St. at Jefferson Avenue, Washington.
“There have been a number of people who haven’t bothered to show or call,” said Washington County Tax Revenue Department solicitor Blane Black at mid-morning.
A week before Wednesday’s deadline, about 2,200 appeals had been filed. By last Thursday, that number had grown to more than 3,000. With a few hours still remaining in which to appeal a property assessment, Black said, “I know right now they’re probably near 5,000.”
Tyler Technologies projected that between 5 percent and 6 percent of property owners would file appeals. Five thousand appeals would be 4.16 percent. Black compared this figure with Allegheny County, where about 10 percent of property owners appealed after it reassessed. Tyler’s contract with Allegheny County afforded no opportunity for informal reviews.
Wednesday’s hearings coincided with the final day to file appeals. Three-person boards of appeals plan to hear from property owners through Oct. 31. If someone misses an appointment with the assessment appeals board, Black said a property owner can take his or her case directly to court Nov. 1 or thereafter.