04-21-2004 Council Minutes Local Board of Appeals & Equalization

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MINUTES OF THE ORONO LOCAL BOARD OF APPEALS AND EQUALIZATION MEETING Wednesday, April 21, 2004 7:00 o'clock p.m. White asked what is the valuation of the property and Ms. Torkelson stated it is $473,000 for land • value which comes to about $9,000 /foot for lakefront. Mr. Torkelson repeated that adjacent properties are about $2,000 - $4,000 less per foot for lakefront than their property. Mayor Peterson asked Davy to return to the Torkelson property for a site visit, meet with them and listen to their arguments. White acknowledged there are building constraints with the 50' lots and estimated that such lots can only support about a 1500 s.f. house, a minimum size house. Davy summarized the valuation looks at the first 50' at a higher value, then with more footage, the value drops. Mr. Torkelson disagreed with this statement explaining that the larger properties can have larger homes with $1,000,000 homes or higher on 100' lots which makes them more valuable than a 50' lot. Davy repeated the assessors look at the first 50', than at the 50 -100' values. Ms. and Mrs. Torkelson stated this results in discrimination against smaller lots with the building restrictions due to limited space. Ms. Torkelson referred to a recent newspaper ad for a lakeshore lot with 115' on lakeshore with the asking price of $1,585,000. Mayor Peterson conveyed her opinion that the most difficult issue to deal with over the past 10 -12 years has been with the residents who have been in the city for a long time who are now at or near • retirement age with fixed incomes and rising property valuations /taxes. These are the foundation people who built Orono. Mayor Peterson stated she sympathizes with these property owners who may be being taxed out of their homes. She told the Torkelson the city is fighting this issue. Mayor Peterson requested Davy to visit the Torkelson property, as she does not want to lose these residents who have built the community. She referred to former Mayor Jabbour who was quite a proponent of this issue, too, in trying to not force residents to leave Orono based on property valuations. Ms. Torkelson stated the city never caught their neighbor's house building activities and now has such a low valuation compared to the Torkelson's property and condition of their house. With having two appeals from the Tonkawa area with over 30% valuation increase, Murphy questioned if all 50' lots on the lake are going up 35% this year. Davy responded that probably not as it depends on the proximity to sales that occurred and certain properties may already be closer to the market values. He further explained that actually tear -downs on 50' lots get to the $450,000 - $500,000 category and this is found in Orono, Tonka Bay and Shorewood, too. Murphy expressed he is troubled by the thought that there may be other locations in Orono that will see such increases, citing the off -lake average increase at 7.5 %. is Page 8 of 11