SMETHPORT — Since Jim Herzog of Smethport received no indication pertaining to his recent request regarding Clean and Green $94 per acre use values, he said, he followed up with a few additional comments Tuesday at the county commissioners’ meeting.
In a prepared statement, Herzog said Pennsylvania judges held that the General Assembly was to set the Clean & Green rate, which they did in Act 89.
“The act did make several changes, one of which is use values cannot exceed fair market values,” Herzog said. “Prior to this passage, there was a question whether C&G use values could be more than fair market values. The Assembly knew C&G was never intended to penalize an enrollee. The act clarified this issue along with several others.”
According to Herzog, the act simply states: “The lowest forest use value, currently $94 per acre, should be applied to all similar properties. This was not done when McKean County changes were made in November 2016.”
McKean County Chief Assessor Angie Tennies replied to Herzog’s comments.
“First of all,” she said, “this has been an ongoing thing, and Jim, in my opinion, we have adhered to the law pertaining to Act 89. We currently have 44 Clean and Green properties where the market value was less than the Clean and Green value, and those values had been adjusted for taxation purposes.”
She continued, “An additional 212 properties have submitted forestry reports and those individuals are getting the actual species rate instead of our weighted average that was put place for the 2017 tax year — $212 an acre based on Act 89.”
Tennies said the law requires that the current rate in place is to be frozen until a countywide reassessment or until the state rates are below our current rates that are in place.
“I respectfully disagree with your interpretation of Act 89 and the fact that the lowest market value is what needs to be arbitrarily placed on every Clean and Green property.
“I have spoken with the Department of Agriculture, and I know you have talked to them pertaining to this issue, and I believe they are in agreement that it wasn’t the intent of Act 89 to require that the lowest market value that is in place on one individual property in the county is to supersede the current Clean and Green values that are in place across the county in our frozen rate of $212 unless an actual species report has been prepared.”
“I respectfully disagree with you,” she said to Herzog, “and I guess we will follow this up to the legal channels. I don’t know if the commissioners want to add anything else,” Tennies concluded.
Commissioners also adopted resolutions authorizing the county to:
enter into an a subcontractor agreement with A Partnership in Housing, Inc. for administering the county’s Emergency Solutions Grant; and
enter a second agreement to the Intergovernmental Cooperation agreement for the Northern Tier Regional 9-1-1 system project.
The commissioners will meet again at 10 a.m. April 25.
