The curious case of Don Siegel's Edgemont assessment

Tax Watch columnist David McKay Wilson investigates the questionable assessment on the home of Don Siegel, a leader in the fight against Edgemont incorporation. 

A leader against the incorporation of Edgemont as Greenburgh’s seventh village lives in a 1921 Tudor on Uxbridge Road, a narrow lane by a pond with granite curbs and a slew of stately homes valued at $1 million.

Don Siegel, the manager for town Supervisor Paul Feiner's 2005 campaign, runs the anti-Edgemont incorporation website. Feiner has waged a full-scale effort to block the Edgemont movement.

In May, Seigel recorded a robo-call to Edgemont residents warning that incorporation would bring higher taxes and reduced services. He also has printed 50 anti-incorporation lawn signs, with one nailed to a utility pole in his Old Edgemont neighborhood.

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DOCUMENTS: From Siegel's informal meeting with Tyler 

Siegel also, and perhaps coincidentally, was a winner in the town's 2016 revaluation. He appears to be an outlier on his street, where some of Edgemont's earliest homes were built in the 1920s. 

His three-bedroom Tudor is known for its purple trim, which Siegel said he applied after seeing a French chateau painted like that in an airline magazine. The land and house, which has about 1,400 square feet of living space on 0.12 of an acre, was valued at $436,200 by the town following the 2016 revaluation.

That's 43 percent lower than the value first assigned in April 2016 by Tyler Technologies, the town’s revaluation vendor

A Tax Watch investigation determined that the reduction was so impressive because the town for two years has failed to tax the house in which that Don Siegel and his wife, Joanne, live. 

How it changed

The preliminary value set by Tyler Technologieswas $767,710, records show. Broken down into its parts, his land — about a 10th of an acre — was valued at $481,600, while the house was valued at $286,110. These values  were in line with eight others on Uxbridge and adjacent Walbrooke Road.

But after Siegel met with Tyler Technologies on April  4 at an “informal” meeting — which is within a homeowner's rights — and described problems with his home and inaccuracies in the town data, Tyler reduced the number of rooms from 8 to 5. It lowered the “grade” of the house from B to C-plus. Its condition was downgraded from “average” to “fair.”

The results?

The value of Siegel’s land dropped a little more than 9 percent, to $436,200.

The stunning part of the new assessment, however, came when Tyler erased all taxable value from the structure — that three-bedroom home in one of Westchester County's elite school districts, with a renovated kitchen and exposed beams in the great room that doubles as the Siegels' living and dining rooms.

He paid about $18,000 in property taxes in 2016 — and saved what could be thousands of dollars by not having any taxable value on the actual house.

Town Asssesor Edye McCarthy, who ran the revaluation and certified Siegel’s value in the town’s 2016 assessment roll, told Tax Watch that she didn’t deal personally with this particular parcel. She couldn't explain what happened. 

She said she focused on the final value — $436,200 — and didn't look at the land and house value. 

“The guy did an informal hearing, and it looks to me that the land value was what it was, and there were more changes," she said. "I don’t really know why. It was based on the model.”

It's instructive to compare the change in Siegel's taxable value from 2015 to 2016 with that of his eight neighbors. Their values rose an average of 31 percent. Siegel's dropped 22 percent, records show. 

Siegel, meanwhile, was astounded to learn from Tax Watch that he was only paying property taxes on the value of his land, and that the town had found that there was no value in his home. 

"Is that right?" he asked. "Us in particular?" 

He told Tax Watch that he availed himself of the opportunity afforded to any Greenburgh property owner in 2016 who received the dreaded revaluation notice.

He presented pictures that detailed interior flaws and the town's inaccurate records — which included an unfinished basement, small bedrooms upstairs and fewer rooms than were on the property card.

“I didn’t get a sweetheart deal from Paul Feiner,” Siegel said. “I took a day off from work to go my informal meeting. You had to get a number and wait. Paul wasn’t there.”

Incorporation supporters concerned

The Tax Watch findings concern incorporation proponents, who last week mounted an intense lobbying campaign to defeat Feiner's attempt in Albany to change state law so the Town Board would have veto power over village incorporation.  A lawsuit against Feiner's rejection of the Edgemont incorporation petition is pending in state Supreme Court. 

The battle between the two factions has been epic, with Feiner hiring a private detective to visit the homes of those who signed the incorporation petition, and the pro-Edgemont campaign hijacking a Facebook page that Siegel had mentioned in his robo-call but had yet to set up.

Robert Bernstein, president of the Edgemont Community Council, has questioned whether McCarthy lowered the assessment of 4 Uxbridge Road to reward Siegel. 

“It looks to me like a political favor to a political supporter of the supervisor,” said Bernstein. “It goes to the integrity of the property-tax system. Everybody is supposed to pay their fair share.”

McCarthy, who has served as Greenburgh’s assessor since 2006, is among her profession’s leaders in Westchester, heading the consortium of municipalities that hired Tyler to conduct revaluations in Ossining, Scarsdale, Greenburgh, North Salem and Yonkers. She has served as the assessor in Hastings-on-Hudson, Pleasantville, White Plains and Rye.

She denied showing favoritism to Siegel.

“I don’t play favorites,” she said. “I don’t care who you are. Whatever the market indicates is my job to reflect.”

Currently running unopposed for his 14th term, Feiner insisted he does not get involved in the valuation process. 

"I will never interfere with assessment for anyone — either for friends or enemies," Feiner said. "There was zero political interference."

What Tyler says

On Tuesday, Tax Watch presented its findings to Tyler's Northeast regional manager, Melissa Baer. Later that day, she acknowledged that the appraisal company had erred in finding the taxable value of Siegel's home was $436,200.

Complicating matters, she said, was the fact there are few Edgemont homes as small as Siegel's, even fewer whose condition was considered "fair," and none which had sold recently. 

The five comparable homes cited in Tyler's study to determine Siegel's assessment had structure values of $165 per square foot — precisely what Tyler valued Siegel's home at in April .

Before the house value simply vanished. 

"I can't tell you without research what the value of this property should be," Baer wrote. "Logic dictates that it (the building value) shouldn't be zero, so my recommendation to the assessor is for her to review the property." 

After receiving Tyler's statement on Wednesday, McCarthy announced that she would review Siegel's assessment, but only for the 2018 assessment rolls because state law precludes her from applying changes retroactively. 

She'll keep an eye on the dynamic real estate market. Among 11 three-bedroom homes for sale in Edgemont today, there's a 1,400-square-foot home at 25 Inwood listed for $565,000, said Brad Kimmelmen of Julia B. Fee Sotheby's International Realty in Scarsdale. Since January, four Edgemont three-bedroom homes have sold, including 25 Highpoint Road, which sold for $575,000. 

Based on the Tax Watch inquiry, McCarthy reviewed town assessment records on Wednesday and flagged six other properties in Greenburgh, including five in Edgemont, in which the allocation between structure value and land value raised questions. They would be reviewed, along with Siegel's in 2018. 

David McKay Wilson is an opinion columnist for The Journal News/lohud and writes the weekly Tax Watch column.