Appearing for the Appellant
Keith and Elana Ellsworth, Owners
Appearing for the Respondent
Mr. Chad Nunweiler, Assessment Appraiser (Advocate), Revaluation and Assessment
Mr. Braydon York, Assessment Appraiser, Revaluation and Assessment
Mr. Travis Horne, Appeal Coordinator, Revaluation and Assessment
Grounds and Issues
The Notice of Appeal in Exhibit A.1 and the clarification of grounds in Exhibit A.2 state that the appeal is against the property valuation, which is too high compared to other warehouse properties in the area.
Issues and Facts:
Our appeal is based on the fact that no one in the CN Industrial Area has close to our property taxes. If the taxes on our property are based on 2015 assessment, there seems to be an error in calculation; our business expenses were taken from rental income, not net earnings. Our net earnings in 2015 were $93,521.00, not $201,550.99. Based on our net earnings, calculated at 0.0369 mill rate, we should only be valued $2,534,173.44, not the $5,462,086.45. This is a difference of $2,927,826.56 that we have been paying taxes on. Talking to our realtor, $2.5 million is a more realistic valuation of this property. See Attachment 1.
The main address the City of Saskatoon has used as a comparable is 2020 St. Patrick Avenue, which is a specialty building (Versacold) as well as five times the land mass. On the whole, most properties in the CN industrial area are valued at 60 percent-20 percent of our building. See Attachment 2.
Our taxes have gone up over 1000 percent on 10 years. We feel our taxes should be between $35,000.00 and $45,000.00. We have attached the increases over the past 10 years; with our year end being September, there will be some slight variance to the City totals. See Attachment 3.
Exhibits
Exhibit A.1 Notice of Appeal from Keith Ellsworth to the Board of Revision, received February 1, 2019.
Exhibit A.2 Appellant’s response to the Secretary’s letter, received February 26, 2019.
Exhibit B.1 Secretary’s letter dated February 5, 2019, requesting additional information.
Exhibit R.1 Report submitted by the City Assessor titled “Warehouse & Automotive Response 2019 Assessment”, received May 21, 2019.
Exhibit R.2 Report submitted by the City Assessor titled “Written Argument 2019 Assessment”, received May 21, 2019.
Exhibit R.3 Report submitted by the City Assessor titled “Property Assessment 2019 General Law and Legislation Brief”, received May 21, 2019.
Exhibit R.4 Report submitted by the City Assessor titled “Property Assessment 2019 Notice of Appeal and Legislation Brief”, received May 21, 2019.
Exhibit R.5 Report submitted by the City Assessor titled “Property Assessment Response Evidence Law and Legislation Brief”, received May 21, 2019.
Undertaking Request by the Board of Revision, dated June 3, 2019
Undertaking Response by the City Assessor, dated June 4, 2019
Supplementary Notations
There were no preliminary issues or recommendations.
Conclusion
Based on the evidence presented, the Panel concluded that equity and fairness had not been achieved with similar properties and that the Assessor erred in generating the assessment for the subject property in a way that its assessed value was too great and did not reflect a fair and equitable proportion of the assessment burden relative to other similar warehouse properties in the City.
The appeal is upheld and the Board directs the Assessors to adjust the assessment for the subject property so that the modelled net operating income more realistically reflects the actual net operating income for the subject property, at about half the current modelled value, and to recalculate the assessed value for the subject property accordingly, which should result in an assessed value of about half the current value, or approximately $2.5M.
As this would result in a reduction in the assessment value, the filing fee is to be refunded.
The Hearing concluded at 10:53 a.m.