GUILFORD – Guilford residents may have to find another place to swim this summer as the town board attempts to negotiate a new agreement for the swimming area on Guilford Lake.
Since 1979, the town has had a lease with landowners Samuel Strieff and Helen Stromberger for approximately one and a half acres of beachfront property which are open to the public during the summer.
Strieff terminated that lease at the beginning of January following a sharp increase in the assessed property value of the 79 acres his family owns on Guilford Lake. The re-assessed property values were released July 1, 2011.
“There was a clause in the agreement that either party may move to terminate,” said Supervisor George Seneck, R-Guilford. “We were contacted by their lawyer, at which point we replied with a letter asking them to consider negotiations.”
According to Seneck, the assessed value increased from approximately $50,000 to approximately $378,000 at the end of December. Town assessor Penny Haddad was unavailable to comment on the exact numbers.
Haddad, who is also the assessor for the Town of New Berlin, was appointed in December following the resignation of previous assessor, Susan McIntyre.
“The re-assessment of property values was an attempt to bring equity and fairness to the entirety of the tax base,” said McIntyre of the two-year process. “Previous assessments were not at full market value, which meant many people were paying too much or not enough.”
McIntyre explained that 2011 was the first year that the assessment roll was at 100 percent full market value.
“The longer you leave the assessment roll to languish, the more likely you have these big disparities in value,” she said in regards to the significant increase in the assessed value of the Strieffs lake front property. “Many assessments of homes in Guilford went down this year ... waterfront property is always significantly higher.”
Seneck said the next step would be to wait for a reply from Strieff’s attorney, James Konstanty of Oneonta, as to whether negotiations will be opened. Konstanty did not return phone calls seeking comment on this story.
“We’re still in the preliminary stages of figuring this out,” Seneck said in response to concerns that the town board was not being transparent about the issue. “Before anything official happens, there would have to be a resolution and action taken by the board, public forum, etc.”