North Country This Week

CANTON – An ongoing partnership between the state and St. Lawrence County has helped remediate more than 40 tax delinquent properties over the past several years, which should lead to significant savings for taxpayers in the near future.

A costly problem

Each year the county spends more than $10 million making towns, villages and schools whole on tax bills for tax delinquent properties.

To mitigate this massive cost to taxpayers, the county attempts to foreclose and take ownership of as many tax delinquent properties as it can and puts them up for auction as quickly as possible to get them back on the tax rolls. Although the county is unlikely to bring in significant funding for most property sales, the goal is get them sold to a taxable entity, so they can begin generating revenue through property taxes.

The foreclosure process also creates a two-year window where the county does not have to pay taxes on the property, so a speedy turnaround can create a savings for taxpayers.

However, some properties are too risky to acquire through the foreclosure process because of contamination, which can be costly to clean up.

This leads to properties remaining vacant due to the risk associated with becoming liable for contamination. In some cases the properties become blighted, unmarketable eyesores that are too costly to clean up, but continue to generate a tax bill that the county must pay each year, since the owners remain delinquent.

Protected by contamination

St. Lawrence County Attorney Steven Button said the problem has been a major concern for the county. In some cases the contamination on the property actually works as a shield against foreclosure and allows the delinquent entity to operate a business and not pay taxes.

“We are unable to foreclosure on them, because we can’t take on the risk of the potential cleanup cost, so we basically pay their taxes and they continue to operate,” he said.

As an example, Button pointed to the Cornell Dry Cleaning business, which operated for years despite carrying a tax delinquent status.

“Basically because of the contamination we couldn’t foreclose. They kept operating and we kept paying the taxes,” he said.

Button said the county has long-worked to address the issue, but in recent years those efforts have been ramped up.

Working together

A unique partnership between the State Comptroller’s Office, the Department of Environmental Conservation and St. Lawrence County has created an effective system for tackling these contaminated delinquent properties.

At a recent meeting, County Administrator Ruth Doyle, Attorney Steven Button, Environmental Attorney Gary Bowitch and DEC engineer Matt Duffany explained the process to the county.

The basic premise begins by taking temporary ownership of the property.

This temporary ownership opens doors for the state comptroller’s office to use the oil spill fund, which allows the DEC to perform environmental investigations and cleanups of these properties.

In some cases, no contamination is found and the county is able to move the foreclosure process forward quickly. In other cases cleanups are required.

Once the DEC gets involved, they take over the liability associated with contamination and pave the way for the county to foreclose on the properties. Additionally, once the DEC has cleared the property the risk is removed for potential buyers, making the properties much more marketable.

Officials from the DEC say a major hurdle for using the oil spill fund has been a lack of access to contaminated properties, so they also see the partnership as a win because it allows them to get access to funding set aside for this very purpose.

Some of the more well-known properties that have been remediated under this partnership include the former MR Bells properties in Canton, The Sea Land Industrial Services, Inc. property in Lisbon, Stanley Smith properties in Potsdam, and the Cornell Dry Cleaning and Slavins Furniture buildings in Massena.

So far, the county has been able to clear 44 properties through this process and has eight more targeted for remediation.

In the past three years alone $2.7 million from the DEC has helped clean up properties on 11 St. Lawrence County sites and two more sites are being cleaned up now.