Stance on bill prompts concern
Tomasetti wants fellow members to reconsider improvements measure
HOLLIDAYSBURG — Blair County Commissioner Terry Tomassetti is asking fellow commissioners to reconsider their no comment stance on a proposed bill drawing local criticism partly because of the bill’s timing.
“We just went through reassessment,” former Altoona Mayor William Schirf told commissioners at Tuesday’s weekly meeting. “Now we’re going through instant reassessment.”
Schirf was notified earlier this year of a $2,500 increase in his property value because of a “building improvement.” He was one of many property owners whose assessements are in the process of being updated based on building permit information.
After some research, Schirf said he identified his improvement as garage roof repairs made in 2015 at a cost of $3,100. And subsequently, Schirf said, the assessment office recognized that the repaired roof was reflected in the property value set during reassessment and it subtracted the $2,500 increase.
“So the process worked,” Tomassetti said after the meeting about Schirf’s experience.
Tomassetti said Tuesday that he intends, at next week’s commissioners meeting, to ask fellow commissioners Bruce Erb and Ted Beam Jr. to reconsider the position they took last week when declining to support Senate Bill 1006.
While Beam was present Tuesday, Erb was absent.
The public is also welcome to attend next week’s meeting and address the issue, Tomassetti added.
Commissioners meet at 10 a.m. Tuesday in the basement of the courthouse.
Senate Bill 1006 now has the support of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania.
In a review of the proposed legislation, CCAP Director of Governmental Relations Lisa Schaefer said the measure will improve the timely submission of building permit information to county assessment offices. That task is typically handled by municipalities.
But Senate Bill 1006 also retains language in the current law requiring property owners to tell the county assessment office about building improvements aggregating more than $2,500 when those improvements didn’t require a building permit.
“The value of $2,500 is not a lot of money,” Beam said Tuesday, suggesting that the amount equates to “normal repairs.”
Schirf described $2,500 as “a low bar” that will cause people to forego repairs and allow their properties to deteriorate.
“We should be encouraging people to remodel their homes, not discouraging them,” Schirf said.
Tomassetti distributed Schaefer’s comments on the legislation and related details about a 2002 state Supreme Court ruling in favor of a property owner who challenged Monroe County’s Board of Assessment Appeals.
In that court case, the property owner spent $58,000 to renovate a women’s apparel shop into a brokerage office. Before renovations, the property was assigned a value of $136,200 and after the renovations, the county assessment office raised the value to $176,148.
The state Supreme Court’s ruling affirmed lower court rulings in support of restoring the building’s value to $136,200.
“Not every bit of work done to change a building constitutes an improvement,” the state Supreme Court concluded. “Improvement has been defined as a permanent addition to or betterment of real property that enhances its capital value and that involves the expenditure or labor or money and is designed to make the property more useful or valuable as distinguished from ordinary repairs.”
When Beam and Erb declined a week ago to support Senate Bill 1006, they told Tomassetti that lawmakers should clarify the existing language.
While trying to provide some clarity on Tuesday, Tomassetti advised “repairs are generally not improvements.”
But if a county assessment office reduced a property value because the property has a poor roof, he said, then a roof replacement would be considered an improvement warranting an increase in property value.
“Each has to be considered on a case-by-case basis,” Tomassetti said.
Mirror Staff Writer Kay Stephens is at 946-7456.