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City, School Board to vote on steel plant assessment: LACKAWANNA(Buffalo News, The (NY) (KRT) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) May 5--The City of Lackawanna and its school district are close to reaching an agreement in their lengthy legal battle over the assessment on the former Bethlehem Steel Corp. site. The Lackawanna City Council and the Lackawanna School Board are each set to vote tonight on a settlement that would slash the property's $40 million assessment, Lackawanna Mayor Norman L. Polanski Jr. said Sunday. Officials would not disclose details, but they said the agreement does not require the city to pay a refund to the site's owners and it will leave the city on a fiscally stable footing. "We have negotiated what I feel is a very good deal for the city," Polanski said. The agreement, if approved, would end an eight-year fight over the taxable value assigned to the sprawling, 1,400-acre former Bethlehem Steel property. The site's current owner, Mittal Steel Co., pays about $1 million in property taxes each year to the city and hundreds of thousands of dollars more to the school district, the county and in sewer taxes. Those payments are a key part of Lackawanna's $21 million annual budget, Polanski said. The assessment on the property during Bethlehem Steel's glory days in Lackawanna was $131 million, but Mittal today argues that the site is worthless. The value was reduced twice previously, in 1990 and 1997, and both times the city ended up paying a total of $7 million to the site's owners as a refund for overassessment. A 2006 audit from the state comptroller's office warned that Lackawanna was in a precarious financial situation and cited the potential loss of tax revenue from the Mittal site as a serious concern. However, Polanski and Council President Charles Jaworski said Lackawanna will withstand the drop in future tax payments driven by the lowered assessment, thanks in part to increased state aid and new development in the city. In fact, Polanski will lower property taxes in the budget he plans to unveil Friday. The agreement was reached following secret negotiations involving the city, its lawyers and representatives of Mittal. The city and school district have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal fees in the case. Lawyers for the city met with three members of the City Council on Wednesday to brief them on the proposed deal, a meeting that wasn't revealed ahead of time to the public. Councilwoman Andrea Haxton said she was warned not to share specifics of the settlement, and she questions the need for the secrecy and apparent speed in voting on the deal. "I don't understand their urgency in pushing this through when it's been seven years in the making," Haxton said. Jaworski said any public airing of the details prior to the vote would open the carefully crafted agreement to possibly fatal nitpicking. In addition, the City Council is expected to vote today on a proposed expansion of the Steel Winds windmill project on the former Bethlehem site. The first phase of BQ Energy's project has 13 windmills -- eight have been built -- and Polanski said the second phase would see another 13 windmills built inland. News Staff Reporter Helen Jones contributed to this report. [email protected] To see more of The Buffalo News, N.Y., or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.buffalonews.com. Copyright (c) 2008, The Buffalo News, N.Y. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |