BY ADAM ATKINSON
North Country This Week

POTSDAM — Two Elderkin Street residents are asking the village to intervene on their behalf with the town in a property assessment dispute which they estimate caused them to overpay $18,925 in property taxes between 2021 and 2023.

And, the village is looking into the issue for them with the town assessor’s office.

Larissa Fawkner and Allen Gontz of 30 Elderkin said their property assessment was increased by 32 percent in 2022 with no improvements to the property, but that clerical errors and errors of material fact were present which inflated the assessment from $274,000 to $362,000, up $88,000.

Requesting refund

Fawkner and Gontz, were traveling when the assessment rolls were posted in May 2022 and missed the opportunity to voice objections during the grievance period. However, they have submitted a NYS RP556 refund form to the town assessor’s office and to the village board of trustees. The form is an application for a reimbursement of their tax overpayment.

Such a form can be submitted at any time of the year and outside the normal grievance period.

“The state does not have jurisdiction over the local assessor office. That responsibility falls to the Local Boards of Trustees. Without oversight and accountability, an Assessor’s office can make random assessments and increase a property assessment to inflict financial harm, or decrease assessments to benefit others,” Gontz said during the public comment section of the August village meeting.

All mixed up

Fawkner and Gontz told North Country This Week in a separate interview that their assessment seemed to be raised based on incorrect MLS listing data and the sale price of their house and property, which was $449,000 in June 2021 when they purchased it. Fawkner’s and Gontz’s property, along with the neighboring 32 Elderkin, was part of the former 1880’s NY Standard Oil and Co. warehouse site located across from Mama Lucias. The warehouses at the site were split into 30 and 32 Elderkin, renovated and restored and have been residences for about a decade.

“We were traveling when assessment rolls posted in May 2022. When we returned, my husband, Allen, went to the assessor’s office and spoke with Jim McGuire the town and village assessor. Allen asked him why we’d been reassessed, and Jim said, ‘It’s because you bought the most expensive home in the Village.’ We later learned that ‘chasing sales’ is not the policy, procedure, or protocol of the assessor’s office. In fact, no other property which sold in the same time frame as ours was reassessed based on its selling price,” Fawkner told the village board in their August meeting.

In addition, the photos accompanying the assessment, done by McGuire, who is now retired but serves as a consultant to the acting town assessor, contained photos of a property that wasn't theirs, and contained factual inaccuracies regarding how much finished, livable space there was inside the home, Fawkner and Gontz said.

The assessment data the pair obtained from former Acting Assessor Lachelle Dilcox during the May 2023 grievance period said there were two kitchens in the house instead of one, that it had four bedrooms instead of the two it does have and that it had a finished second floor, which is an unfinished attic with exposed insulation. The assessment also did not assess the property where the house sits at the appropriate residential rate of $19,400 but at a rate of $33,200.

In addition, Fawkner pointed out to North Country This Week in a separate interview that while the property does have waterfront on the back side, it’s also 100 paces from an active railroad line, the traffic of which has cracked the sheetrock in the residence.

Fawkner said McGuire visited the residence for the first time in the Fall of 2022, after their assessment was raised, and during that visit confirmed that no improvements had been made to the property. Improvements which may have justified an increased assessment.

In addition to all of the errors on their assessment, Gontz, a two-tour Somalia combat veteran who used his GI Bill to put himself through college and obtain his PhD and his veteran’s benefits to help buy their first home on Elderkin in Potsdam should be entitled to a discount on his property taxes based on his service. However, a part of the paperwork the assessor’s office should have had to implement that discount, the NYS Veterans Exemption from Real Property Taxation form RP 458-a, turned up missing at the office.

Former assessor verifies

Current acting Town Assessor Danie Mitchell declined to comment on the dispute when contacted by North Country This Week.

However, Dilcox, who was fired on May 24 after being appointed in January 2023, did confirm that there were numerous errors on the 30 Elderkin St. property assessment at the time.

“Those two properties (30 and 32 Elderkin) have been very entangled over the years,” Dilcox told North Country This Week. This entanglement includes an out-of-code construction electrical entrance on the 30 Elderkin lot which powers 32 Elderkin, a power entrance that Gontz and Fawkner can’t have relocated or brought up to code due to National Grid’s ownership policies.

Dilcox confirmed that the errors claimed by Gontz and Fawkner on the 30 Elderkin assessment for 2022 and 2023 were indeed present.

“You can’t chase a sale says the New York State Assessors Association,” Dilcox said. “But their assessment looked like a hard copy of the MLS (sale listing).”

“Jim (McGuire) had gone by pictures of the MLS,” she said, adding that some of the pictures on that listing were not of the house at 30 Elderkin but presumably of 32 Elderkin, both of which were at one time part of the same property.

Dilcox said she visited the property in the spring and toured the building to verify their claims concerning the errors. This hike was done even when no improvements had been made to the property.

She worked on a stipulated agreement, which was approved by the town’s board of assessment review, that brought the 2023 assessment more in line with what Fawkner and Gontz felt was appropriate, and only a few thousand dollars more than what the property was originally assessed at.

Her investigation into the assessment had caused her to be at loggerheads with McGuire who, although retired, was the consulting assessor for the acting, she said.

Soon after trying to sort out the issue, Dilcox was fired from the acting assessor’s position on May 24 by Town Supervisor Ann Carvill. “I was told I wasn’t a ‘good fit,’” she said.

Mitchell was then appointed as the new acting assessor.

Fawkner and Gontz recently filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the town for all assessment data and notes from January 2020 until present. The couple received back 56 pages of documents provided by the assessor’s office, but nothing definitive to indicate when their assessment was increased 32 percent by retired assessor McGuire.

A closer look requested

Based on their interactions with the assessor’s office during the dispute, Gontz and Fawkner feel they have been unfairly targeted for some reason, perhaps in part due to Gontz’s employment as a geologist and geophysicist professor from Clarkson University or because of their previous out-of-state residence.

“In Summary – For tax years 2021, 2022 and 2023, based on clerical and material fact errors: The assessment increase of 32%, which Larissa referenced, represents a tax overpayment of $11,857,” Gontz told the board at their August meeting. “The land under our home being taxed at an inappropriate residential rate, represents a tax overpayment of $1,982. The taxation for 600 sq. ft. of unlivable space represents a tax overpayment of $5,085. All other material fact errors represent a dollar amount that is unknown to us at this time. The total in over taxation for 2021-2023 is $18,925.”

“We ask you, the Trustees, to assist us in getting a fair, just, and honest review of our refund request,” Gontz said. “We’d also ask that the Board initiate an investigation into the Assessor Office to better understand if specific people and properties have been targeted in a manner with an intention of inflicting financial harm and hurting specific community members.”

Village looking into it

The village board briefly discussed the property assessment debacle at 30 Elderkin at their Sept. 5 meeting and appear to be taking some action on it.

“I have met with (village attorney) Andy Silver regarding the request by Mr. and Mrs. Gontz … last meeting… they approached us,” Village Administrator Greg Thompson said at the Sept. 5 meeting. “I spoke to Andy, and Andy doesn’t really think this is a village problem at this point. He thinks it’s a problem to be dealt with with the assessor’s office. So I plan on meeting with the assessor in the very near future to get more definitive information on that situation and I will post it to you as I have it.”

“So basically, as far as the Gontz situation goes, when the assessor’s office just flat screws up… the whole thing’s a shemozzel. They did it wrong. They didn’t research it. They screwed up,” said Deputy Mayor Steve Warr, who said Gontz and Fawkner had been “gouged for $18,000.”

“I will know more after I talk to the assessor,” Thompson said. He said the question on the issue is whether or not Fawkner and Gontz are eligible to receive a refund for the overpaid amount.

To add another wrinkle to the complicated situation, Silver is an attorney with the firm Silver and Collins of Canton that represented the seller, Dr. John Savage, whom Gontz and Fawkner purchased the property from. And the firm also represented their neighbor at 32 Elderkin, this past spring when Gontz and Fawkner were trying to resolve the issue with the out-of-code electrical entrance on their property which supplies power to 32 Elderkin. The couple feel the firm may be too involved to provide the village with an objective opinion on property assessment issues.

“The Village can refund us their portion of our overpaid taxes despite or irregardless of the Town’s position. It’s fairly obvious that we were over assessed,” Fawkner said in a separate conversation with North Country This Week. “If you overpay on your personal income taxes, you are refunded. This situation is the same. You don’t need a lawyer to make that determination.”