PropertyTaxReform

Private (homeowner) Associations, their Private Beaches, and the Local Assessor

I live in a small city within easy commuting distance of New York City.  It includes some lovely waterfront communities (with property values to match), a downtown with many corporations, a 1- and 2-acre zone, neighborhoods that include children who collectively speak 30 or more different languages and many whose families live below the "self-sufficiency level", multiple high schools, a few magnet schools.

There are a number of subdivisions which have some common property, and it turns out that the local assessor has been very generous with them.  Is this legitimate, or is it a privilege (private law, for the benefit of a few at the expense of the rest of the community)?   I can't see how it is anything but a privilege, a free lunch for special people. (To which I say, eschew privilege!!)

I'll start with the waterfront communities.  There are several of them.  Within one, there are are several private associations.  No gates, no signs, except the "no trespassing" signs on their private beaches; other than the beach signs and the real estate ads, which invariably mention "deeded beach rights," they don't seem any different from other streets on their peninsula.  But each of the three sub-neighborhoods has some private property on the waterfront.   

Americans and Golf, and the local assessor

For the past few days, an article entitled "More Americans Are Giving Up Golf" has been on the NYT's "most emailed" list.  A few excerpts:

“The problem is time,” offered Walter Hurney, a real estate developer. “There just isn’t enough time. Men won’t spend a whole day away from their family anymore.”

The five men who met here at the Wind Watch Golf Club a couple of weeks ago, golf aficionados all, wondered out loud about the reasons. Was it the economy? Changing family dynamics? A glut of golf courses? A surfeit of etiquette rules — like not letting people use their cellphones for the four hours it typically takes to play a round of 18 holes?

Or was it just the four hours?

Here on Long Island, where there are more than 100 private courses, golf course owners have tried various strategies: coupons and trial memberships, aggressive marketing for corporate and charity tournaments, and even some forays into the wedding business.

Rodney B. Warnick, a professor of recreation studies and tourism at the University of Massachusetts, said that the aging population of the United States was probably a part of the problem, too, and that “there is a younger generation that is just not as active.”

But golf, a sport of long-term investors — both those who buy the expensive equipment and those who build the princely estates on which it is played — has always seemed to exist in a world above the fray of shifting demographics. Not anymore.

Surveys sponsored by the foundation have asked players what keeps them away. “The answer is usually economic,” Mr. Kass said. “No time. Two jobs. Real wages not going up. Pensions going away. Corporate cutbacks in country club memberships — all that doom and gloom stuff.”

In many parts of the country, high expectations for a golf bonanza paralleling baby boomer retirements led to what is now considered a vast overbuilding of golf courses.

Between 1990 and 2003, developers built more than 3,000 new golf courses in the United States, bringing the total to about 16,000. Several hundred have closed in the last few years, most of them in Arizona, Florida, Michigan and South Carolina, according to the foundation.

“Years ago, men thought nothing of spending the whole day playing golf — maybe Saturday and Sunday both,” said Mr. Rocchio, the public relations consultant, who is also the New York regional director of the National Golf Course Owners Association. “Today, he is driving his kids to their soccer games. Maybe he’s playing a round early in the morning. But he has to get back home in time for lunch.”

This struck me as I thought about one of the things I see in my town's property tax assessments.  The private golf clubs have been given very generous (low) assessments.  Where surrounding land is selling for $400,000 per acre, the 3 private golf courses are assessed at $140,000 per acre (that's the 100% figure, not the CT 70%).

What a kind gift to give those who own or benefit from these private parks!  But I've got a real problem with asking the low-income homeowners of my town to subsidize those who  can afford expensive club memberships.  No, more precisely, I've got a problem with all the non-members -- probably 99% of the property-owners in town -- being asked to subsidize the club members. [And the golf course assessments aren't the worst assessment gift in my town.  I'll post on that one soon.]

Assessments that favor the big landholders

It is apparently standard practice for assessors in some places to value large parcels of land very generously.  I'm not talking about special valuations for farms or forests (even if they are long-fallow and in areas where land sells for hundreds of thousands of dollars per acre).  Rather, I am talking about valuations which treat the portion of an owner's land beyond the minimum zoning size as if it were worth perhaps 10% of its real value.

This happens in fairly dense suburban neighborhoods and in places where much larger lots are the minimum.    

Connecticut: Downtown Sprawl, Property Assessments and Getting the Incentives Right

I live in small city within commuting distance of New York City. For the 32 years I've been here, there has been a 4.3 acre hole-in-the-ground within about 1/4 mile of the city's "100% location."  It is surrounded by a chain link fence, and bordered by a shopping mall, a hotel, some apartments and some office buildings.  It is within walking distance of a major railroad station and two interstate highway exits.   It is even identified in the city's assessment database as the hole in the ground.  It has weed trees and concrete-lined puddles.  I seem to recall that at least one person has drowned when their car ended up in deep water on the property.

When I moved here, the tallest building in town was 22 stories. Today, the tallest building is still that 22-story office building.  It sits a bit to the north of the geographic center of downtown.  We currently have under construction a 37-story luxury condo complex ... on 1/2 acre at the northwest corner of the downtown ... and a 39-story hotel and condo complex on 3 acres, solidly in the downtown area and close to the highway and railroad.

Connecticut: Should Cities Use a Sales Tax?

Newspapers in New London ("Urban Mayors Push For Local Sales-tax Option") and Stamford ("Malloy: Cities should have sales tax option") had articles today describing 4 Connecticut cities' mayors' aversion to increasing the property tax.

Four urban mayors, including Kevin Cavanagh of New London, urged the legislature Monday to give municipalities the ability to levy a local sales tax of up to 1 percentage point to raise revenue without resorting to property-tax increases.

The articles quote Dannell Malloy of Stamford, Kevin Cavanagh of New London, Bill Finch of Bridgeport, and Dan DeStefano of New Haven as endorsing the idea.

Malloy, along with mayors Bill Finch of Bridgeport, John DeStefano of New Haven and Kevin Cavanagh of New London, said cities need other options for raising revenue besides burdening constituents with more property taxes.

Florida: How Should We Tax Ourselves?

Educators: tax plan skepticism

link: http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20080319/NEWS/803190317
The article reports the reactions of teachers' and school administrators' organizations to proposed property tax reductions in Florida. I want to focus on a fairly short section of the article:

The plan is intended to stimulate the economy by making homes more affordable and allowing people to keep more spending money.

Under it, lawmakers would have three choices to recoup the lost funds:

• cut spending,
  
• expand the sales tax to include other items or services, or
  
• raise money through a new source.

So much money would need to be raised that proponents expect lawmakers would be forced to close sales tax exemptions on everything from bottled water to pet food to sky boxes in sports arenas.