Hospital, bank appeal tax assessments
Attorneys for Brownsville General Hospital Inc. and the First National Bank building in downtown Uniontown have filed separate appeals in Fayette County Court seeking further reductions in the assessed values for each of the properties. The action was taken despite separate rulings by the Fayette County Tax Assessment Appeals Board that lowered the assessed value of the hospital more than $3 million and reduced the assessed value of the bank building nearly $250,000. The appeals were filed in the office of Fayette County Prothonotary Lance Winterhalter.
Last month, Fayette County Commissioners Joseph A. Hardy III and Vincent A. Vicites, acting in their capacity as the Fayette County Tax Assessment Appeals Board, made a ruling that lowered the assessed value of the hospital from $9.64 million to $6.3 million. Commissioner Angela M. Zimmerlink, the third member of the appeals board, did not sign off on the decision. She earlier said that she felt the board should have gone with a higher value originally recommended by Fayette County Chief Clerk James A. Hercik, CPE.
In a separate ruling, Hardy and Zimmerlink dropped the assessed value of the First National Bank building at 58 W. Main St. from $1,117,450 to $875,000, a reduction of $242,450. Vicites was unavailable for the hearing and did not participate in the ruling.
In the Brownsville Hospital appeal, attorney Joseph M. George Sr. is seeking a reduction in the assessed value and cites an appraisal by Merico S. Lignelli Jr. of Monongahela for the property at 125 Simpson Road that set the “fair market value” at $2,662,000. “The appellants believe and therefore aver, that the assessment is unfair, unreasonable and excessive and therefore request that the assessment be reduced so as to accurately reflect the market value of the subject property and the exemption based upon the property’s use for a charitable public purpose,” the appeal states.
George is also asking that the facility should remain non-taxable. “The board’s determination in denying an exemption based upon the property’s use for a charitable public purpose is arbitrary, capricious and against the law,” George wrote in the appeal.
During the appeal hearing, officials representing the hospital, which is now being leased by a for-profit corporation for the first time in its history, earlier sought to keep the facility exempt from paying real estate taxes. Earlier this year the hospital, which now does business as Tara Hospital, was leased to a group of investors using the name of Brownsville General Hospital Inc. from Brownsville Property Corp. Inc, which technically owns the facility. Hospital officials previously testified that the hospital is not operating at a profit, but also said that four full-time emergency room doctors had been hired. Officials also had testified that the hospital was in desperate financial shape and would have been closed if a buyer wasn’t found.
Last week the hospital furloughed 10 employees.
In calculating the new figure that Hardy and Vicites agreed on, Hercik said he did a cost approach, an income approach and also evaluated details of the recent sale of Greene County Memorial Hospital in Waynesburg.
The hospital case has been assigned to Fayette County Common Pleas Court Judge Steve Leskinen. Hercik said the a “de novo” hearing will be held, which means the case “starts all over again.” Both sides can present appraisals and testimony.
In the First National Bank appeal, attorney Denver E. Wharton of Johnstown is asking that the “actual assessed value of the subject real estate should be Seven Hundred Sixty-eight Thousand One Hundred Eighty-one and 81/100 ($768,181.81).”
In the appeal, Wharton alleges that the value is excessive for three reasons: the values are not in uniformity and/or conformity with similar properties in the city of Uniontown and Fayette County; the values are excessive with regard to the fair market value of the property; and the county real estate assessed value is inaccurate due to the fact that the common level ratio times the assessed value of the real estate exceeds the fair market value of the subject real estate.
During the appeal hearing, appraiser David Murphy testified that the two-story building, constructed in 1988, was originally a regional bank facility, but through bank merger lost its usefulness. He also said the second floor is now vacant and since the building was built for one user, the costs to break the building into offices that could be rented out would be cumbersome. He added that attempts to rent the remainder of the building have been unsuccessful.