Board of Equalization Meeting   8/8/2024

All right.

I will call to order the Board of Equalization of Albemarle County meeting for August 8, 2024.

Let's start with a roll call for the Board of Equalization members, please.

Len Mayhew, Jack Jewett.

Bob Beard, Samuel Miller.

Evan Mayo, Scottsville District.

David Mitchell, Whitehall.

David Norford, Rivanna Okay, all of the members of the board that are presently appointed, all the seats that are filled have members present in person and we have a quorum.

Peter Lynch, County Assessor, Billy Taylor, Deputy Assessor,

and Jeff Collinger is actually sick today.

Thank you.

Has everyone had a chance to review the minutes prepared by the Assessor's Office reflecting the decisions reached and the board meeting on July 29th, 2024?

Anyone have need more time or have any questions regarding those?

All right, thank you, Len.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, David.

All in favor?

Aye.

All opposed?

Okay, the July 29th, 2024 minutes are unanimously accepted by the board.

I think the McFarland appeal would be old business.

I think the guidance document draft would be old business.

And the matter of the letter update to the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors would also be old business.

Maybe start with the simplest one.

OK.

So I have updated the letter.

Mr. Lynch was kind enough to print this out, essentially adopting the suggestions made by Mr. Rosenberg about how we could affect the bidding process, or at least the Board of Supervisors consideration of our request for legal counsel.

And we're also enclosing Mr. Rosenberg's letter so that the Board

in the position of the County Attorney with respect to our request.

Anyone have any further revisions or suggestions for improvement on this letter?

If not, is there a motion to pass the letter for signature and upon full execution, deliver the letter to the Board of Supervisors?

So moved.

Thank you, David.

Okay, thank you, Len.

All in favor?

Aye.

Okay, unanimously agreed.

Would the Assessor's Office be willing to convey that?

Oh, absolutely.

Thank you so much.

Shall we do the guidance document next?

Okay, so I wanted to say thank you to Mr. Lynch and his office for preparing this.

I thought it was excellent as drafted and that Bob made it superlative.

I think it is going to be very helpful to people who are considering making this appeal.

Anthony Arsoli used to do a great job of explaining that.

I just feel like it's too late for them to rethink what they're about to do.

So hopefully by giving this earlier in the process, they can make the most productive use of their 10 minutes plus three.

Does anyone have any further revisions for the, we'll call the guidance document as it was revised by Mr.

Beard?

I like the way it is.

Is everything in here correct?

I believe so.

Yes.

Yes.

I mean, nobody benefits if the arguments couldn't be voted on, even if we agree with them, so.

Thank you, Len.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Bob.

All in favor?

Aye.

All opposed?

Okay.

Unanimously agreed that the version prepared by the Assessor's Office, revised by Mr.

structural improvement.

I will also look into seeing if we can just include that as one of our documents on our website where we would have the Board of Equalization application and other documents for my office and leave it there until the organizational meeting and, you know,

So I'll see if maybe having it there will help even prior to have our opinions.

Okay, sounds good.

Yeah.

Every residential appeal.

No, no, no.

I'm sorry.

Not when you get your assessment.

No.

This would be when somebody requested an application for the BOE and returned it to us.

That's the time I picture us sending them this form, not with the application.

Not with the application?

because we get a lot of, we send a lot of applications that don't get returned anyway.

So now we have the Farland Stonefield LLC, Yule.

If it will be helpful to me, Peter could just recap where we are on this.

There's been so many different versions of it.

I'm clear.

Okay, I think that would, I agree with you.

I think that'd be really helpful.

The latest request from the withdrawal.

Right.

I don't think that's part of the record before the board.

Well, it was sent to you.

It was sent to the board.

So it's part of the record.

Okay, I believe that makes sense.

I think it should be part of the record if we're going to make a decision on the request.

Otherwise, it's not before us because there's no one here.

Unless the assessor is off.

We sort of can't divert, in my view, we can't divert the process unless there's a request to do something different.

And if the request isn't made at the hearing, it's got to be introduced somehow.

Okay.

Yeah, I mean, just very simply, I understand that as of either earlier this week or the end of last week, Mr. Smith on behalf of McFarland Stonefield LLC has requested that the

So I still withdraw?

I want to understand something.

You, between the last time Mr. McFarland was here

before they requested from you both the draw of this.

You did a, you sent us some additional information.

That revised your assessment number for 2020.

The first part of that is correct.

The second part is not.

So quite often you guys ask me what would happen if we used this information.

So I was not saying that our assessment was incorrect.

This is what it should be.

I was saying based on this information, if you are

going to go by the fact that this is select service instead of full service.

This is what the effect would be.

There were two, grade and there was select service versus full and then the grade within select service.

There's a third one with the management fee.

Management fee.

So what was the

Well, there was a discussion about the parking lot, but only because we had some information that we had found ourselves that was not provided by the applicant that indicated that they should be paying or at one time should have been paying a certain amount of money for maintenance on that parking.

The statement is what we believe it's part of the parking area.

The applicant indicated it was part of the park and part of the common area, but there was nothing in the statement other than the 5,500 I think the number was for the parking.

So we wanted to make sure, you know, as we were looking at all these different parts or as you guys were examining all the different parts, make sure that everything

but across the board on hotels like this, you had fees set at 3.5.

So you put that in there too.

Correct.

It would have caused the assessment to increase, I believe by $95,000.

That's correct.

95.5.

So let me ask a question again.

I don't want to go a little behind on this.

That I believe is correct.

So it's up to you to actually accept the withdrawal.

And if you don't accept the withdrawal, then you need to just make a decision, whatever that decision would be.

We could go with your revised ones, select service.

You could, and I'm not recommending it.

The current assessment, yes.

When I was going through the email that their attorney sent, he made a statement about

the restaurant making $12,000.

But it's $69,000.

But in the P&L, that's right.

In the P&L explosion, $60,000.

Let me ask you another question.

If we affirm the current assessment

Yes.

They are.

OK.

So my perspective on this, the way I would

look at it is first are they allowed to withdraw their appeal effective immediately in Mr. Smith's words and then if they are we can decide whether or not are they allowed to make that request first and then if they are do we allow them do we allow the request do we meet the request or not.

I'm concerned that we cannot allow an appeal that's already had their evidence submitted to be withdrawn partway through the process and just give my non-legal opinion on it.

There's stuff in the statute that I understand is there to sort of safeguard them from

increased appeals, right?

There's certain things that for assessments that the Assessors Office has to do if the Board of Equalization wants to increase the assessment.

And I think it would be inconsistent with that.

set that framework to if the hearing is not going exactly the way the appellant wants to just yank the decision out of the hands of the board partway through.

I think once the hearing begins, I think it's before the board and we can decide it.

I don't want to play for those.

and the Assessor's Office.

OK.

I understand.

So I don't want to belabor the point either.

I guess I do feel a sense of responsibility

establish the facts as we understand them in response to some of the things in this letter.

So as one example, on number five, Mr. Smith says, the Assessor's Office requested the additional information on February 16, 2024, and owner provided the requested information to Business Day's letter later February 20, 2024.

Could the Assessor's Office just

I don't have the documents in front of me.

I believe Ted had them put them out of all the email respondents, but

The response to the request for the information came after I requested it, but didn't have been requesting it multiple times prior to seeing it.

Could be fast.

I don't know if that's more productive or not.

I guess I think the way that Mr. Smith characterized the appeal and the way that his client appeared and what he said and how truthful it was, I disagree with almost every bit of it.

Take your point that there's no point in belaboring it.

We're probably not ever going to see eye to eye on it.

But I think I would just like to state for the record that I think Mr. McFarland got a fair and impartial hearing at every stage of this process and that any challenges to his credibility from the board were self-imposed or self-inflicted.

Okay, so is there a motion with respect to the request to withdraw the appeal by Mr. Smith as of August 5th?

I move that we deny the request to withdraw the appeal.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Norford.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Bob.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Good, thank you, Lynn.

It's unanimously agreed that the request to withdraw the appeal is denied.

Okay, thank you, Lynn.

Thank you, Bob.

All those in favor?

Aye.

All those opposed?

OK.

For the record, that is, what, $15,943,600?

All right.

Any further business?

OK. Is there a motion to adjourn the meeting?

So this is it for reassessment appeals.

We have no supplemental appeals as of yet.

You guys have set up a meeting for each month, September, October, November, December, just in case we do actually get one.

So I will be contacting you if we do get any appeals during that period.

They'll be based on new construction typically.

I just want to let you know that.

Okay.

Well, if this is our last, maybe our last meeting of the year, I just want to thank the Assessor's Office for being so energetic and professional and say that everybody in Albemarle is lucky to have you.

Ditto.

Yes.

Absolutely.

The scheduling and coordination in particular.

Yeah.

One last question I have.

That is correct.

So that is a good question, I mean.

So I was told not to respond to this email because it wasn't addressed to me.

So that's why I didn't address their withdrawal at all to him.

So I was told that if you direct me to respond,

And I'm assuming basically we can take for granted that that's what you're doing here.

I can do a letter.

Actually, I think the letter in the name, you know, the no change letter that Mr. Mayo will sign anyway can indicate that the withdrawal was denied and that, you know, the normal verbiage that the assessment is no change.

I agree.

And I think that's appropriate.

I don't think we really want to empower.

I don't think we want to set the precedent that we're going to get into email correspondence with anybody's attorney over the merits of an appeal.

Right.

We said he needed to show up and argue these issues if he wanted to.

And so that's the proper channel.

And I don't think it's necessary to respond, notwithstanding the request that we respond.

I guess just a motion to adjourn unless there's anything else?

American motion to adjourn.

Seconded.

Okay.

Thank you, David.

Thank you, Len.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Okay.