Court orders countywide reassessment

By Mike Crowley

MEADVILLE TRIBUNE

Crawford County must complete a countywide reassessment of property values by April 30, 2030, with the resulting assessments effective for the 2030-2031 tax year, according to a court decision filed in Crawford County Court of Common Pleas.

Crawford County must provide the court with a comprehensive plan to complete the reassessment by Dec. 15, according to the order from Senior Judge Oliver J. Lobaugh, who presided over a two-day July trial in the lawsuit filed by the city of Meadville.

Lobaugh’s 34-page findings of fact and conclusions of law filed last week sided entirely with the city in declaring the county’s outdated assessment values to be unconstitutionally nonuniform.

“The current assessment roll has become untethered from a reasonably consistent relationship with present market values,” Lobaugh wrote, using language that echoed the city’s pre-trial brief in the case. “The resulting disparities are extraordinary, pervasive across municipalities and property classes, and regressive against lower-value properties.”

Attorney Tim Wachter announced the victory to Meadville City Council members during their meeting Tuesday evening. After reviewing the motivations behind the case and highlights of Lobaugh’s decision, he offered a statement.

“The evidence showed, and the court agreed, that lower-value homes were assessed at substantially higher rates relative to market value See REASSESS, Page A6

Continued from Page A1 than higher-value homes,” Wachter said. “That means working families and owners of modest homes in the City of Meadville have effectively been subsidizing the tax burden of more valuable properties throughout the county. The city brought this case because every taxpayer deserves to be treated fairly, and we are pleased the court has ordered a countywide reassessment to restore constitutional uniformity and fairness to the system.”

As he concluded, council member Autumn Vogel pumped her fist in affirmation while Mayor Jaime Kinder said, “That is good news — good news to Meadville.”

CrawfordCountyhasuntilNov. 15 to file an appeal in the case.

Eric Henry, who chairs the county’s Board of Commissioners and testified as a witness in the trial, said in a phone interview Tuesday evening that county officials plan to meet with their lawyers later this week to discuss next options in the case.

“I think every discussion is on the table,” Henry said. “Nothing’s off the table.”

Following the July trial, Henry posted to Facebook a statement attributed to the Board of Commissioners and the county’s chief assessor that said the county would use reserve funds to pay for an assessment if one were required.

“There will be no property tax increase required to pay for the process itself,” the statement said.

On Tuesday, Henry said he didn’t know how much the county had in reserve. Recent estimates on the cost of the reassessment process have been “$6 million and up,” he added before noting that there would be additional costs as well, such as for the numerous appeals that would likely result from reassessment.

While a reassessment will be expensive, the revenue-neutral process will not produce a windfall for Crawford County, the city of Meadville or other taxing bodies in the county. As property assessments that date back to 1969 are adjusted upward to reflect current market values, the various millage rates imposed on those values must be decreased by a corresponding amount.

The revenue-neutral nature of reassessment was a point Wachter was at great pains to make in reporting what he described as “a significant victory for tax fairness, constitutional uniformity and the residents of the city of Meadville.”

“It does not mean that the city, the county or the school district will be able to receive more in taxes,” Wachter said. “This is not a tax grab in any way.”

Lobaugh’s decision, which repeatedly reiterated evidence from the city’s two expert witnesses, gave some hints as to where the impact of a reassessment might be felt most strongly.

The properties whose value falls in the lowest 10 percent of the county’s residential properties, he noted, are assessed approximately 63 percent higher relative to market value than the properties in the top 10 percent.

Similarly, mobile homes that sold for around $25,000 were often overassessed by astonishing amounts ranging from $40,000 to more than $100,000. At the same time, however, the owners of the parks where those mobile homes were located were drastically under-assessed by amounts ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. Two cases in particular were under-assessed by $1.9 million and $2.1 million, respectively.

The disparities affected more valuable homes as well. Recent sales in the Edgewood and Shadow Oaks subdivisions in the city of Meadville were on average underassessed by about 30 percent, Lobaugh wrote. In contrast, waterfront homes along Conneaut Lake were underassessed by an average of 60 percent.

In addition to citing the city’s evidence in explaining his decision, Lobaugh highlighted the weakness of the county’s case.

“The County presented no testimony during trial refuting or even calling into question the conclusions from the City’s experts,” he wrote, later adding, “the County rested (its case) without offering any evidence or calling any witnesses.”

Over the course of more than a half century, the county made no effort to determine whether a reassessment was needed, Lobaugh reiterated later in his decision, “and offered no evidence at trial to rebut the City’s expert proof of pervasive nonuniformity and regressivity.”