Properties Committee Chair Robert Hyde at a Herkimer Legislature meeting Wednesday declared the status of two properties in the town of Webb, which had been seized by the county through tax foreclosure, as “deadlocked.”
Hyde made a motion for the Legislature to resolve the issue under the committee as a whole process, which is utilized when a committee previously exhausted its options.
The resolution failed, receiving nine no votes from the following legislators: Jeffrey Stone, Leonard Hendrix, Raymond Smith, Vincent J. Bono, Bernard Peplinski, Patrick Russell, Frederick Shaw, Bruce Weakley, and John Piseck.
Peplinski said the no votes didn’t constitute a position on the issue, but rather a belief against acting as a committee as a whole.
Chairman Raymond Smith said the issue now returns to the Properties Committee.
Hyde said at an Aug. 20 meeting his committee split four to four to defeat a vote to sell the property at auction, basically ending his line of action, “You as chairman...do not support your own committees.”
Several of the eight legislators casting yes votes, including Hyde, made statements as to a potential negative impact on the future of Herkimer County’s “in rem” process.
Hyde said in a phone interview the county loses footing in future court cases involving in rem, “It opens a can of worms that I don’t think the county can deal with.”
In rem is the legal procedure used by the county to foreclose on properties which have failed to pay taxes for two years.
Between 60 and 90 parcels are seized annually through the in rem process, according to Pam Putch, county property agent.
Once the county takes ownership, the parcel is taken off the property tax roll for as long as it takes to sell.
The county-owned properties are then sold at auction in May or June each year.
The properties being discussed Wednesday consist of two parcels, a house on State Route 28 in Old Forge and a camp on Minnow Brook Lane in Webb, both owned by Terry and Deborah Jones, according to County Administrator James Wallace.
He said in a phone interview the house is assessed at $152,000 and the camp is assessed at $290,000.
The owners failed to pay taxes, interest, and penalties on the house totaling $17,784.67, and $29,332.59 on the camp, by a deadline on Jan. 15, 2005, according to Wallace.
The county had been awarded the deeds to the property in late April by a judge, he added.
Wallace estimated owners contest the seizure of their property through an attorney an average of between 15 and 20 cases annually.
The Joneses went through the legal channels and have lost at three levels of the court, according to Hyde.
Bono proposed making changes to the in rem process. He and Russell suggested extending the deadline for owners to re-claim properties as far as up until the day of sale by the county.
Legislator Helen Rose said although losing a home is always based on “tragic” circumstances, allowing the Joneses to retroactively keep their property prior to changing the process “is wrong.”
“It is not fair to owners who did not have an opportunity to re-claim their homes. In rem is about property not people,” she added.
Hyde said in a phone interview Thursday, “By the Legislature by-laws it can’t be sent back to my committee. I brought it up to be voted on as a committee as a whole and they refused it. Now it sits in limbo just like it has for the last four years.”
“As long as it’s not brought up, they [the Joneses] get to live there for free until something is done. The county is paying their taxes, ” he said, “which I think is wrong.”
Herkimer, N.Y. —
