Finance Committee Votes On 4 Property Tax Refund Requests – Approves 2, Denies 2

The Finance Committee met 02/21/2022. Although they had eight action items on the agenda, it was a short meeting lasting slightly less than 15 minutes.

The first two items they took up were the requests from Vantage Financial Leasing to refund their 2020 personal property taxes and rescind their 2021 personal property taxes. City staff was recommending that the request regarding the 2020 taxes be denied and the request for the 2021 taxes be approved.

The city’s tax assessor explained to the committee that Vantage Finance Leasing leased smartboards and large monitors to the Appleton Area School District. When they reported those items in February of 2020, they listed them on their statement as “furniture, fixtures, and equipment” which is a taxable category. They did provide an asset list with a short description, but there was nothing on their statement indicating that the items were tax exempt computers or smartboards, so the city accepted the personal property statement as it was made.

On 08/05/2021 the city first heard from Vantage that there may have been an error in reporting and that tax exempt equipment had been recorded as taxable. Unfortunately, the request for review came in after the Board of Review had been held on 06/03/2021. After June 3 they can no longer make corrections for the 2020 year, only for the 2021 year.

She said that they had found no statutory avenues to make corrections for 2020, so they were recommending that the committee deny this refund. “It’s unfortunate that there are deadlines, and this is one of those where we just don’t see a statutory way to refund for the 2020 year.”

Alderperson William Siebers (District 1) who was the chairman of the committee asked Dan Lies, the Vantage representative, if he wanted to speak.

Dan said that, although there was no written evidence regarding this, when they had filed their paperwork in 2020, they had called the city and verified how those smartboards were supposed to be reported. He said, “We were advised at the time that because of the way that they were multi-function—you know, they are both a whiteboard and a smartboard—that they would be listed in the furniture and fixtures section.”

Then then reached out to the city again in August of 2021 because the AASD did not want to reimburse them for the property taxes even though their lease agreement required them to reimburse Vantage for any taxes incurred. At that point the issue was figured out. Dan understood the timeline, but he reiterated that they had contacted the city originally when filling out the paperwork even though there was not written documentation to show that, and he asked them to understand the fact that they had tried to do their due diligence.

Alderperson Siebers asked Attorney Behrens if he wanted to speak to this.

Attorney Behrens said the assessor had done a nice job of summarizing. Regarding the item, “we did look at it, we looked at the statutes and there was not an opportunity because of the timing of when this was brought that the assessor had the ability to authorize any sort of a refund, so that’s why the recommendation is to deny the refund for the 2020 taxes.”

Alderperson Siebers asked the assessor if she had anything further to add.

The assessor noted that they didn’t have documentation of any prior correspondence with Vantage. While it was possibly that they had called them with some general questions, they had nothing in their records indicating that the items in question were smartboards or computer equipment.

The committee members had no further questions or comments and voted 5-0 to deny the reimbursement request.

They then took up Vantage’s second request which was to rescind their personal property taxes for 2021.

The assessor said that they were recommending this be approved for an amount of $41,460.43 because it was an obvious palpable error in the reporting of the items and was certainly correctable under statute 74.33 for the previous year of 2021.

Dan did not have any further comments, nor did the committee members have any questions or comments. The committee voted 5-0 to approve the request to rescind the 2021 taxes.

The next three items were

(1) Request to award Unit A-22 Concrete Paving to Vinton Construction in the amount of $4,382,958 with a 2.5% contingency of $107,000 for a project total not to exceed $4,489,958.

(2) Request to award Unit Z-22 Sewer & Water Reconstruction to Calnin & Goss, Inc in the amount of $1,380,182 with a 7.5% contingency of $103,514 for a project total not to exceed $1,483,695.

(3) Request to approve Finance Committee Report 1-P-22 for Concrete Pavement, Sidewalk Construction and Driveway Aprons

The committee members had no comments or questions and approved each of these three items 5-0 with no discussion.

They then moved on to the two remaining requests to refund/rescind 2021 taxes.

The first was the “request to deny Manos Holdings (Dental Associates) request for refund of 2021 real estate property taxes for 2115 E Evergreen Dr, Appleton, WI (parcel 31-1-6510-39)”

The assessor mentioned that this property owner came to the Board of Review on June 3 and the Board sustained the taxes after listening to the testimony and evidence. The assessor’s office had not received anything new since that date, so they were recommending that the committee deny the request.

The committee had no further comments or questions and voted to deny the request 5-0.

The second was a “request to approve Smart Choice MRI request to rescind 2021 personal property taxes for parcel 31-9-99-0132-30 “

The assessor recommended that this request be approve and had nothing further to add to what was already in the agenda packet.

The committee voted 5-0 to approve the request to rescind 2021 taxes.

The committee then went on without discussion to approve a number of 2022 Budget amendments to record.

Alderperson Siebers finished out the meeting by mentioning that he thought this was Finance Director Tony Saucerman’s last meeting. Alderperson Siebers thanked him for his service and support of the committee. “I’ll miss you. I’m not a believer that somebody’s shoes are too big to be filled. I’ve always believed there always somebody that’s out there that’s better than us, but it’s gonna be hard.”

View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=925219&GUID=26CDEB29-23E2-4FFE-96AC-83E4C1119100