BY ADAM ATKINSONNorth Country This Week

POTSDAM — The town supervisor will soon sign a contract for a town-wide property revaluation with the same firm that conducted a controversial reassessment of the City of Ogdensburg just last year.

The city’s revaluation caused a stir there over the reassessed property values which ballooned to triple their previous amounts in some cases.

At their meeting Feb. 6, Potsdam town council members approved a resolution authorizing Town Supervisor Marty Miller to execute a contract between the municipality and the real estate appraisal and analysis firm GAR Associations LLC of Clifton Park to provide the revaluation service.

Miller was authorized to sign off on the deal pending a final review by town attorney Francis Cappello.

GAR Associates was the firm hired by the city of Ogdensburg in 2023 to conduct a citywide reassessment of properties. The city’s revaluation caused something of an uproar with many residents voicing complaints of tripled assessments and increases of more than $100,000 in assessed values of their properties. The controversy ultimately led to the city assessor resigning amongst the kerfuffle.

In Potsdam, the revaluation has been a goal of the town since last year and was a talking point during the town supervisor’s race in the fall, a race which Miller, the former deputy supervisor, won handily versus two write-in candidates, Peggy Brusso and Larissa Fawkner.

Fawkner spoke at the Feb. 6 meeting during public comment, her second appearance in as many months. She addressed the soon-to-be contract and also called into question past assessment practices by the town.

Fawkner and her husband Allen Gontz spent the better part of last year fighting a past assessment which they say was selective and inflated.

The couple filed paperwork, specifically NYS Form RP-556, with the town assessor’s office for a refund of what they felt was overpayment of property taxes, but were ultimately denied the refund last fall.

At the meeting Feb. 6, Fawkner informed the board that selective assessment was illegal.

“The assessor and the clerk do not get to make up his or or her own assessment rules and criteria,” she said.  

Fawkner outlined several requests she made of the town board at last month’s meeting, specifically that the town conduct an audit of assessments of all town properties “with a focused goal of identifying artificially and preferentially deflated assessments that are below comparable properties.”

“I’m seeking an opportunity for the Board to communicate back to the community its progress made on those requests all of which are pertinent to assessment practices,” she said.