BY JIMMY LAWTONNorth Country This Week

OGDENSBURG — City council lowered the tax levy by a $31,340.38 adjustment after  mistakenly assessing taxes on a U.S. Postal Service property that should have been fully exempt.

The error will also impact the city school district as the city collects taxes on its behalf.

City council approved two resolutions addressing the error, which involved the Postal Service property at 431 State Street.

City Comptroller Angela Gray said property was transferred from the Growth Fund to the U.S. Postal Service.

When the ownership changed, the property should have been placed on the tax roll as wholly exempt, Gray said. Because that didn’t happen, city, county and school taxes were improperly assessed on the property.

“So basically it was an assessment error that has been corrected and is being corrected through these resolutions,” Mayor Michael Tooley said during the discussion

“That is correct,” Gray responded.

St. Lawrence County has since amended its records and changed the property's status to wholly exempt, Gray said.

The remaining correction falls to the city because Ogdensburg currently collects taxes for the Ogdensburg City School District. The city will adjust its tax levy to remove $31,340.38 in taxes associated with the property.

The council unanimously approved a resolution authorizing the correction of the assessment error before approving a second resolution to adjust the tax levy.

The votes come less than a year after Ogdensburg officials disclosed another problem involving the city's taxable assessment roll.

In October 2025, City Manager Fonda Chronis told council that roughly $30 million in tax-exempt properties had mistakenly been included in the taxable assessment roll. The error led the city to revise its projected tax rate after officials had initially anticipated a much larger reduction.

Chronis said at the time that corrections to the assessment roll had not been manually accounted for by the city after the county's system had been locked for changes. He said the city would put safeguards and checks and balances in place to prevent the problem from happening again.

The Postal Service property correction is separate from that earlier assessment issue, but both cases involve tax-exempt property being improperly reflected in tax calculations.

LaChelle Dilcox serves as the city assessor. She did not speak at the meeting.

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