If You Ask Me / By Martha Knight

What is your house worth?

Is it worth the sum of what you gave for it, and the improvements you have made since then?

Is it worth what it cost to build it?

Is it worth what it is insured for? Is its replacement cost?

Is it worth what you could get for it, in today’s real estate market?

Is it worth the number on your tax bill, its assessed value, which was said to be switched to “100 percent valuation” some years ago, causing some homeowners to think their taxes were being quadrupled in one fell swoop?

Then again, not all values are about money. This is the home you and your mate built together. Or this is where you raised your kids. Or this is a place like no other, and no matter how much they offer you or a court says they have to pay to take your home, you will defend your right to stay in your home to the bitter end, and have to be removed in the bucket of a GradeAll.

How about the factory you own? What is it worth? Maybe for taxing purposes it has a pretty hefty value, say $34 million, including its land and road frontage and rail siding and water tank and so forth. The tax assessment number seems substantial. And yet, that is not the way it is being taxed.

There are other considerations, such as the benefit to the public of encouraging people to own industrial properties, and to build and equip and operate factories. This creates jobs! People with jobs will want to live here and do business here and send their kids to our schools and build or enlarge their houses. So there are LERTA and KOZ and other tax incentive programs, whereby those who own industries or contemplate moving their operations into our industrial parks are allowed to pay much less in real estate taxes.

Factories are worth what you could sell them for, right? But if no one wants to buy them, then what are they worth? Their scrap value?

What is the value of Viko/Ethan Allen—what it’s worth as a manufacturing facility? What a grand location, by a railroad and a major state highway! It could be retooled and pretty soon it would be turning out beautiful furniture, and utilizing area hardwoods, and employing lots of people. Think what that would be worth!

Or maybe it is just a building or two, enclosed space, and some parking area. Room for part of a wealthy collector’s vintage fire trucks. Well, okay, there won’t be as many jobs, but think of the tourists who will flock to the area to see the collection! They will buy meals, and maybe tchotchkes, and some will feel impelled to hike along trails. Is the former furniture factory worth as much as a museum as it was as a factory?

Worth as much on paper, valued for estate purposes, for insurance purposes, for selling purposes, for taxing purposes, for the good it provides to the community, for what the owner’s fair share is of the cost of government and services and supporting public education and safety? Should the rest of us be willing to subsidize that, shouldering part of the tax burden on its behalf, used one way, but not if it is used a different way? Was that factory truly worth just that much and no more, all the time it was on the market? Is its value what the new owner paid for it, or what the new owner could get for it by selling it again, or what the new owner paid for it plus what it will cost to make alterations?

How about a thriving farm outside of town? (Do we have any active farms in town, or the borough? I believe we still do have an agricultural zone, although it’s a while since Johnny Babola could drive his tractor and farm implements up the street to do his haying.) How should a farm be taxed?

Fair market value? That would be what the farmer could get for it. Include it in a catalog, put up a For Sale sign, put it online, wait for the offers to come rolling in? or maybe the value is the sum of its production components: land, machinery, livestock, buildings, springs, wells.

But wait, the farm is not uniformly attractive and valuable, is it? Some of it is pretty as a picture, perfect for a summer home. Some of it would make dandy home sites right along the highway, although not all the standard municipal services are available. Maybe they will be later.

There’s a house where the farmer lives. Years ago the old farm house and lot were sold off. Somebody may want to buy just the newer house. It’s worth more than the pasture. Or is it? How about the cornfield? Once a year it makes good money for a few weeks.

There’s a lot of money tied up in equipment and dairy cows. The bulk tank alone was quite an investment. Surely that added to the value of the property.

So the farm is a sort of factory, and is worth the value of its production? But it doesn’t provide many jobs. Do we think of farm owners as the wealthier people in our community? Or are they “land poor”? Do they cost the rest of us a lot, in government services such as police and fire protection, and road work and snow plowing? Unless they live on a state road, when they don’t? In that case do they get a tax break? Or should they get a LERTA for farmers, or some discount because of the general benefit of maintaining land in farm use, or at least preserving it from housing and commercial development?

Some of the farm is wooded, and some is steep side hill. What good are the trees to the farmer? Not a whole lot, except as erosion control, but every 80 years or so there might be a timber harvest. The farmer doesn’t bank on it, because borers and moths and fires can eliminate that very, very slow crop. But there is benefit to the rest of us, in air and soil quality and wildlife habitat and places for us to recreate and in keeping the hillsides in place instead of becoming mudslides.

Do we want the government to have to own the rest of the forests, and tend and protect them, in addition to the millions of acres already publicly owned and tended? Or is it better for all of us if farmers and forest owners remain willing to own and care for a substantial amount of the earth’s surface in our area? What is the value of that land, for taxing purposes? What the owners could unload it for, or—its USE VALUE?

Talking Clean and Green, people. It’s a good thing, for all of us.

Peace.