Unfairly Assessed Residents Sue the Village of Scarsdale

Scarsdale, New York. Over 150 property owners in the Village of Scarsdale, New York have commenced a legal action against the Village of Scarsdale, its Assessor, and the Mayor and Trustees seeking to rescind the village’s 2016 Final Assessment Roll. According to the Petition, the 2016 townwide property reassessment systematically undervalued Scarsdale’s larger homes in order to reverse the results of a prior reassessment two years earlier – its first in 45 years – which resulted in a substantial shift of the tax burden to those larger properties to which their owners objected.

The 81-page lawsuit, accompanied by 57 exhibits, contends that the systematic undervaluation of larger homes, assessing them at less than market value, for the purpose of shifting the tax burden to smaller homes, assessed at market or above market value, is both unconstitutional and a violation of New York tax law requiring that all properties be assessed at the same rate.

The lawsuit, an Article 78 proceeding filed in Supreme Court of the State of New York, Westchester County, follows eight months of public outcry over the results of this controversial townwide revaluation and the Village’s refusal to void the revaluation and revert to the 2015 assessment roll, despite admissions by the village of the failure of the property revaluation.

The Article 78 Petition describes how the intentional systematic undervaluation of larger properties and overvaluation of smaller properties occurred, beginning with protests from larger home owners, followed by the retention of a third party consultant, J.F. Ryan, who proposed using a novel means of assessing homes that even the New York State Office of Real Property Tax Services had problems with.

In addition, according to emails obtained by Scarsdale residents under the Freedom of Information Law, the Scarsdale Assessor Nanette Albanese and her consultant, J.F. Ryan, repeatedly used various multipliers to ‘give favorable treatment to properties owned by prominent elected officials in the community in the hope that by so doing, they would give her the political cover she knew she would need beginning in June 2016 when the public would first learn the results of the 2016 reassessment.’

While larger homes in Scarsdale experienced a financial windfall as a result of the Ryan reassessment, owners of smaller homes, many of whom are elderly and on fixed incomes, were devastated by the result.

According to an October 3, 2016 memo that Assessor Albanese wrote, she knew a few months before the tentative assessment June deadline that J.F. Ryan was not performing according to his contract. “Only after the April 20, 2016 poor performance of Ryan at the public meeting did I first start to feel that we could have big problems on our hands with him.”

The Petitioner “asks that the Court (i) declare the 2016 Assessment Roll void and unenforceable, (ii) permanently enjoin Scarsdale from levying any taxes thereunder, and (iii) in its place, order a rollback of assessments to levels existing prior to the 2016 reassessment.” If there is no immediate rollback of assessments to levels existing prior to the Ryan reassessment in 2016, and Scarsdale is permitted to levy taxes now and hereafter on the basis of the 2016 assessment roll, “then any taxpayers who paid more than their fair share, as determined by what they would have had to pay had there been a rollback of the assessment roll, should be entitled to receive refunds of excess taxes paid to Scarsdale and the Scarsdale School District, with interest thereon at the statutory rate in New York.”

The Petitioner is also seeking “declaratory and injunctive relief against Scarsdale’s Village Board under General Municipal Law § 51, which gives taxpayers a statutory right to sue their local officials to prevent any illegal official act, in order to stop the Village Board from levying taxes in 2017 based on the aforementioned 2016 final assessment roll, and to levy taxes instead based on the 2015 final assessment roll.”

Scarsdale Committee for Fair Assessments

Co-Chair Mayra Kirkendall-Rodríguez ScarsdaleMayra@Yahoo.com

Co-Chair Gregory Soldatenko GregSold@Gmail.com

For legal questions about this lawsuit, please contact Robert Bernstein, Esq., attorney for the Petitioner rbernstein@rbblegal.com.