County to hear assessment appeals on two Lock Haven properties
LOCK HAVEN, PA – The new owners of the Susque View Home on Cree Drive in Lock Haven don’t believe they owe 2023 real estate taxes on the property, claiming Clinton County never gave the new owners proper written notice of the change in the building’s status from tax exempt to taxable. As a result, the new for-profit owner, SV Propco LLC, wants an exemption from 2023 real estate taxes from the three applicable taxing bodies, the county, the City of Lock Haven and the Keystone Central School District.
An appeal on the assessment is scheduled for Friday at 11:35 a.m. in the county’s Piper Building. Hearing the appeal will be the county reassessment board, comprised of the commissioners, chief assessor Keith Yearick and board solicitor Larry Coploff.
The Record learned of the appeal particulars through information made available at Monday night’s Lock Haven City Council meeting.
According to the Susque View appeal filed by a Media, PA law firm, the county failed to mail notice of any change from exempt to taxable within the required five days, per county assessment law and “until such time as the proper notice is sent the property tax status should remain exempt.”
Therefore, the appellant asks that the Cree Drive property “should remain exempt until January 1, 2024, for County and City and July 1, 2024 for the School District.”
The county sold Susque View to the for-profit SV Propco LLC on Dec. 1, 2022. The sale to Allaire Health Services, Inc., a New Jersey-based health care company, had first been announced in January of 2022, following a two-year county effort to remove itself from the nursing care business. The sale price, per the appeal statement, was $8,190,000, at which time the real estate transfer tax was paid.
A second assessment appeal will also be heard Friday. Scheduled for 11:20 a.m., the Cockeysville, MD owners of the CVS on Bellefonte Avenue are seeking a reduction in its assessment, claiming that number “exceeds the property’s fair market value.”
Information as part of the assessment filings listed the CVS value at $2,568,000 and Susque View at $6,559,400.
The amount the three taxing bodies would lose, should the two appeals be successful, was not immediately available.
