Leaders: Property taxes must be fair, predictable

They said those would negatively impact seniors, living on a fixed income, and young families struggling to make ends meet, as the middle class in this country is rapidly disappearing and economic divides are becoming more rigidly defined.

“Co-ops truly remain the last bastion of affordable housing in the City of New York,” said Bob Friedrich, president of the Glen Oaks Village co-op. “It’s home to a lot of seniors, working-class families, and we need to make sure that the affordability of co-ops remains constant.”

In 2010, the DOF sent out notices tentatively increasing the property tax on many condos and co-ops in parts of Queens for the next fiscal year by more than 100 percent, but later, after much public outcry, capped the increase at 50 percent and later dropped it to 10 percent.

By law, co-ops are valued as if they are rental properties, even though they are not, which means the DOF must find comparable buildings that are rentals for their valuation calculations, according to the agency’s commissioner, David Frankel,

The comparables they select have a significant impact on the final valuations, and for co-ops that were built before 1974, which is most of those in northern Queens, the law states that those comparables must be rent-stabilized apartments, according to Frankel.

At a public meeting last May he also attributed that year’s tentative tax hikes to both a computer glitch and under-assessment in previous years.

State Sen. Toby Ann Stavisky (D-Flushing) and Assemblyman Ed Braunstein (D-Bayside) introduced a bill to cap co-op tax property assessments at 6 percent to, they said, bring fairness and predictability to the system and help the residents of northeast Queens.

“Immediately our bill had the intended effect and stirred up a lot of conversation, but it also was opposed by the City of New York,” Braunstein said at Thursday’s press conference. “And whenever the state passes something that has a significant impact on the city, and the city objects, it kind of falls by the wayside, and we don’t push forward.”

That bill is still in committee in the Assembly, according David Fischer, a spokesman for Braunstein, but he did not know if or when it would come up for a vote this session.

The city did agree, however, that changes to the co-op property tax system are needed to ensure fairness and equity and that the administration is willing to work with lawmakers and community members to come up with a plan to address these issues.

“Everybody is saying the right things,” Braunstein said of his and Stavisky’s recent talks with the Mayor’s Office and Speaker Christine Quinn. “But there doesn’t seem to be a sense of urgency to get this done.”

Warren Schreiber, president of the Bay Terrace Community Alliance and the Presidents Co-op/Condo Council, said that for too many years co-ops have been the city’s “cash cow,” adding, that the funds raised from these taxes are used to balance the budget, and the burden falls on the middle class, or what’s left of it.

“Middle class housing is going to disappear,” Schreiber said. “We have a unique opportunity to fix a flawed system.”