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Luzerne Co. Commissioners Getting an Earful

Luzerne Co. Commissioners Getting an Earful - Wednesday, July 16, 2008 at 5:57PM EST

Reported by: Andy Mehalshick
Wednesday, Jul 16, 2008 @ 05:57pm EST
ASHLEY, LUZERNE COUNTY- Should Luzerne County delay instituting its new reassessments? That's a question county commissioners faced at a meeting held Wednesday evening in Ashley.

The commissioners are getting an earful from taxpayers. Most of them are angry about the tax reassessment. They say it’s unfair. This is the first tax reassessment in Luzerne County since 1965.

In the beginning taxpayers were told that it would level the playing field. Some would see taxes go up, some would stay the same and others would decrease.

But we are hearing much more from people who say they are getting "whacked" by the new assessments, and some say they could lose their homes and businesses. At least 4,000 appeals have been filed so far.

They want the commissioners to delay the reassessment for at least one year until the problems are worked out. The company that did the reassessment also attended the meeting to answer questions firsthand.

Thousands of property owners are now filing appeals to their reassessments. At the Tax Appeal office in Hazleton Eyewitness News found dozens of people stating their cases to lower their assessments.

More people, including protesters holding signs, showed up at a public meeting in Ashley. Diane Tworek from Hazleton said, "I think that the people who have done a lot of the assessments may not have had a lot of experience doing the values of them so we have a lot of overvalued we are trying to get them lowered based on some of the neighboring properties we have."

78-year-old Charles Reczkowski opened his grocery store, called the Corner Market, in Freeland in 1951. He is there everyday, but now he fears his days here may be numbered because of tax numbers that he says don't add up.

“Unfortunately business isn't as good as it was the past number of years. The high cost of expenses for the general public, they have less money to spend on food and so forth," said Reczkowski.

His small store has increased in value by some 40% and he says he will not increase the prices of his goods, since most of his longtime customers live on a fixed income.

"The percentage of senior citizens in Freeland is about 60%. It’s kind of hard when you go to the drug store for medication and pay your utilities and so forth not too much to buy your food stuffs," he said.

Reczkowski says he would like the commissioners to delay the reassessment for year at the very least, if not completely do away with it like they recently did in Tioga County.
 


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