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HOLLIDAYSBURG -- The attorney for a citizens group challenging Blair County's reassessment project is preparing to counter a request for the group's lawsuit to be dismissed, as recently proposed by the attorney representing the county and its reassessment company.
"Our objective is to do everything we can to stay in the game and get our day in court," attorney Robert Donaldson told the Blair County Citizens for Accurate Reassessment who met Wednesday night in Hollidaysburg.
In a recent court filing, attorney Joan Righter Price asked Blair County Judge Elizabeth Doyle to dismiss the lawsuit, claiming that BC-CAR has no standing to file because the group owns no property.
Price also maintained that the group's members have access to an appeals process, which some BC-CAR members have used successfully to address their property value complaints.
Donaldson and BC-CAR leaders, who also spoke at Wednesday night's meeting, said those positions can be countered.
The BC-CAR may not own property but it has a membership and based on federal case, the group has every right to defend the interest of its members, Donaldson said.
And even if some members have had success through the appeals process, they shouldn't have had to go that far, BC-CAR President Aaron Ritchey said.
Evaluator Services & Technology, the group Blair County hired to manage the reassessment project, came up with many unrealistic values that shouldn't have been calculated or they should be adjusted by the formal appeals board, Ritchey said.
"Those guys were trained to defend EST's numbers," BC-CAR Secretary Richard Latker said.
And EST, Ritchey said, is a company with a desire of meeting a preconceived ratio: that a third of the property taxes would go up, that a third would go down and third would stay the same.
"You can't tell me that ratio is the same for every county undergoing reassessment," Ritchey said.
Donaldson said that Price is attempting to get the judge to remove EST from the group's lawsuit by contending that the company is only a contractor, beholding only to the county. But Donaldson said he plans to counter that by pointing to other court rulings in which contractors have been held responsible.
"We're trying to keep (EST) in the game," Donaldson said.
Price, in her legal documents, indicates that as a result of EST's work, Blair County went beyond its minimal obligations to comply with state laws governing reassessment.
It did that by providing property owners with estimates of future taxes, by holding informal sessions with property owners to review property information and by arranging more than 9,000 meetings with property owners whose values were subsequently changed.
BC-CAR, however, has argued that it has compiled accounts from multiple property owners who encountered difficulties with the reassessment process, prompting them to spend time and money addressing what's been a flawed process.
Donaldson said he wants to help those property owners, including ones who walked away or didn't even get started in trying to address the values assigned to their properties.
"We have to find a way to address the people who just gave up … who fell through the cracks," Donaldson said.
Mirror Staff Writer Kay Stephens is at 946-7456.