A Chichester developer said if he has to, he’ll take the town to court to correct what he says is the select board’s unfair reneging on a mutually agreed upon deal for him to repay delinquent property taxes.
Joe Austin said he was puzzled at the select board’s response to his request Tuesday because a board member who formerly agreed with him now refused, and another who formerly disagreed with him had his back.
“It’s just backwards from what it was,” he said. But it wasn’t enough for a successful vote to reconsider.
Austin said he sat in a private negotiation with the three-person select board in September, and they hatched a deal for him to repay the tens of thousands of dollars of back taxes he racked up when his condominium development stalled after being caught in a Ponzi scheme.
He said two selectmen, Richard DeBold and Jeffrey Jordan, agreed in that private session to cut him a break on unpaid taxes dating to 2009, partly because his property value had also been found to be vastly overassessed.
But two weeks later – this time in a public session without Austin present – the select board voted, 2-1, to change the terms of the deal. Former selectman Mike Paveglio said he’d always objected to the privately negotiated deal, which he felt was too forgiving. He found the support of a riled up audience in offering a different deal that would leave Austin still delinquent on at least two years of taxes.
Paveglio also found the support of Jordan, who strayed from his initial support of the nonpublic deal. Together, they formed a majority over the dissenting DeBold, who said last year it was “unsettling” that the select board “sat down and negotiated in good faith on both sides, and now we’re changing it.”
On Tuesday, it was a different story. Jordan was the one offering a reconsideration of the nonpublic deal, but now DeBold wasn’t having it. The third selectman, Tom Jameson, who was elected in March, wasn’t party to the original negotiations and said he wouldn’t vote.
Jordan’s motion to reconsider died for lack of a second.
DeBold said after the second deal was hatched, an attorney representing Austin’s Chichester Condominium Corp. didn’t object to the deal, so he didn’t want to go back on it.
“They were even thanking the town attorney for his work on this,” DeBold said.
But Austin said he always refused to sign the second deal, maintaining that the privately negotiated one was binding.
“I don’t know where that information is coming from,” he said of DeBold’s telling, “but it’s totally inaccurate.”
After a brief exchange with the select board, he left the Grange Hall on Tuesday unsatisfied.
Austin said compared with the nonpublic contract, he was forced to dramatically overpay on his taxes to settle his bill so he could take a loan to finish the development. The project received a final approval from the planning board last month.
“The owe me. They should be paying me about $16,000 by that contract that DeBold signed,” he said. “It’s a screwy deal. The whole thing’s been messed up, but it ain’t over till it’s over.”
Austin’s property was assessed a few years ago at more than $800,000, reflecting the potential value of the land after it’s divided with condominium documents in place. But he said those documents were never finalized in the midst of the Financial Resources Mortgage company Ponzi scheme that dashed the hopes of many developments like his and sent the perpetrator to prison for 15 years.
He took the assessment to the Board of Land and Tax Appeals, he said, and won, resulting in a diminished assessment of $164,000. He’s prepared to fight again over the tax deal, he said.
“What I can do is take ’em to court if I have to,” he added. “What I can say is they broke that contract. I had a contract.”
(Nick Reid can be reached at 369-3325, nreid@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at @NickBReid.)