TechCity ruling forces town to shuffle funds
The Town Board has approved using about $646,000 from various fund balance lines to cover refunds it must pay as a result of TechCity’s property assessment being lowered.
The town owes about $785,000 due to a court decision that lowered the assessments for parts of the sprawling, multibuilding TechCity business park, formerly an IBM plant. But much of the money will go to Ulster County, rather than the owner of TechCity, because the county compensated the town when TechCity failed to pay some of the taxes it owed over a six-year span.
The board approved the payment process during a meeting Thursday. Ulster Supervisor James Quigley said the town will make the payments later this year.
In April, a state appeals court said a 2014 lowercourt ruling that favored the town was flawed because it did not take into account appraisals TechCity submitted in its effort for lowered assessments.
The appellate-level ruling set TechCity’s total assessment at just under $30 million, sharply lower than the nearly $44 million set by the town.
The case involved 22 of TechCity’s 26 parcels along both sides of Enterprise Drive and challenged the values on the 2010-12 tax rolls. Because the reduction was set by court order, the new figure was implemented automatically for an additional three years, with refunds required through the 2015 tax year.
Quigley noted TechCity has filed another lawsuit challenging the property’s 2016 assessment.
“They’re not happy with the judge’s decision and the values that were set in the appellate court decision, so they’ve sued us again,” he said. IBM vacated its Ulster plant in 1995, after some 40 years of operation there, and sold it to downstate developer Alan Ginsberg in 1998 for about $3 million. Ginsberg renamed the site TechCity and pledged to fill all of its vacant space quickly, but the site has never been even half full in the 18 years since and most of the tenants have been small businesses.
TechCity recently demolished several buildings at the site and it has the entire property up for sale, without a specific asking price.