 
|
|||||||||||||
              
|
Oops! Can this fort be worth $234,300? And you thought your new assessment was too high Thursday, January 25, 2001 By Brian Lyman, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
PINE TWP -- Rustic 1 BR, no bath, no garage, open, eat outside, no carpets, windows, doors or heating. Allows rain, snow, animals in. Built by 8-year-old. $234,300.
That's the market value Allegheny County assessors assigned to Matt Rodriguez's fort, a 3- by 5-foot structure built with scrap wood during the summer of 1999.
When Matt's mother, Beverly Schmidt-Rodriguez, learned it was worth nearly twice as much as her two-story home in Franklin Park, she was confused, then amused.
"All I could do was laugh," said Schmidt-Rodriguez, who works as a clinical director for Medicare managed care.
The slanted lean-to, overlooking Pine Creek, is the only "structure" on her 10 acres in Pine.
Matt got the wood from Sandy Reidmiller, his aunt, who owns an adjacent farm.
The wood "was worth maybe $1," Reidmiller said.
He constructed the fort just above the creek, with the red scrap wood, two old concrete blocks and nails he wasn't supposed to use.
"It took me about a day," said Matt, now 10.
Allegheny County officials said the property value was set by Sabre Systems and Service, an Ohio company that was hired to revalue every parcel in the county.
A Sabre official speculated that assessors, confused by bad maps provided by the county, identified another building as being part of the Schmidt-Rodriguez property.
"It was very difficult to put the right building on the right piece of land because the maps were very, very poor," said Paul Ferguson, Sabre Systems revaluation manager. "We could easily have put the wrong building on the wrong piece of land."
Mike Mickey, Allegheny County's manager of property assessment public information, blamed Sabre.
"What they give us, we have to deal with. It has flaws," Mickey said.
Both, however, recommended that Schmidt-Rodriguez file an appeal. Mickey said the county would investigate the property.
"We're going to fix this," he said.
The fort is described on the county's reassessment Web site as a two-story, 10-room house. No images are provided. The shack, according to the Web site, also has two fireplaces, 31/2 baths, a full basement and central air and heating.
The listing also mangles the owner's name, listing it as "Bevery Sue Rodriquez."
Schmidt-Rodriguez had hoped to build a home on the land, which was valued by assessors at $84,900 -- triple the previous value and well above the $2,057 sale price listed in county records. But she gave up on the project after learning of state Department of Environmental Protection regulations that carefully monitor construction along protected wetlands.
"[DEP officials] came out and told me I would have to build a culvert over the flow of the water to put a driveway in," she said. "That's obviously going to push the price of a driveway up enormously."
Schmidt-Rodriguez never drew up plans or filed permits to build on the parcel, and though she's proud of her son's construction, she will appeal the assessment.
"I'm not going to pay taxes on a $230,000 fort," she said.
Reidmiller, standing a few feet away from the fort, pointed out a beaver dam in the creek, and said a beehive was nearby.
If the fort is worth $234,300, how much would the beehive fetch?
"Maybe $50,000," said Reidmiller.
|
||||||||||||
