Clarkstown Settles Property Tax Dispute With Palisades Center

CLARKSTOWN, NY — The town of Clarkstown has settled tax certiorari proceedings involving the Palisades Center, ending years of dispute over property tax assessment refunds.

That means returning $27.5 million in property taxes paid to the town, the Clarkstown school district and Rockland County over a four-year period to the owners of the mega-mall. Most of that will come from the Clarkstown school district.

(In New York State, the property tax is local, raised and spent locally to finance local governments and public schools. The state itself does not collect or receive any direct benefit from the property tax. About 60 percent of property taxes are levied by schools, the rest by counties, towns, villages and special entities such as fire districts.)

The settlement roughly halved what the Palisades Center had been seeking. It was a compromise, Town Supervisor George Hoehmann said Wednesday in a statement.

"The settlement protects taxpayers of Clarkstown by establishing the Palisades Mall value at a far higher rate than what the owners had sought and prevented a potential award that was more than double the final outcome," he said. "It also prevents the mall from filing future tax certs for the next three years. The unanimous vote of the Town Board is recognition that this is the best possible outcome to stabilize our commercial tax base for the foreseeable future."

It sets the mall's assessed value for three years at $300 million, and that also was a compromise. While the owners of the mall set the market value at $155 million, the town had valued it at $578 mllion, The Rockland County Business Journal reported.

Hoehmann said New New York State officials should address flaws with the convoluted system of property-assessment equalization rates.

The New York State Office of Real Property Tax Services works to assure equitable property tax allocation among nearly 4,000 taxing jurisdictions. It calculates equalization rates each year for each of the state’s more than 1,200 assessing units because not all municipalities assess property at the same percentage of market value and because taxing jurisdictions, such as most school districts, do not share the same taxing boundaries as the cities and towns that are responsible for assessing properties. Most of the state’s more than 700 school districts distribute their taxes among segments of several municipalities, many of which have different levels of assessment, state officials said.

"Local municipalities are subject to equalization rates that compile a number of factors and apply these to geographic regions," Hoehmann said. "These equalization rates tie the hands of local municipalities especially as it relates to super regional malls that can cause anomalies in valuations. We will pursue legislative changes in Albany to protect the residents going forward."

The Clarkstown Town Board authorized borrowing about $8.7 million to cover its settlement costs, the RCBJ reported.