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By Jennifer Learn-Andes jandes@timesleader.com
Luzerne County Reporter
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Scott Crispell will likely be the first Luzerne County property owner who didn’t negotiate a settlement at mediation, and he intends to advance to arbitration.

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Crispell said he attended a mediation conference on Dec. 1 on his Harveys Lake home and rental property.

County appeals board solicitor David Schwager indicated during the conference that he didn’t have enough information to offer a reduction on his home, Crispell said. About two weeks later, Crispell’s attorney was contacted about the county’s offer to lower the residence to $360,000.

Crispell said he rejected the offer because an appraisal valued his home at $150,000.

“The county’s offer is still $210,000 over my appraisal. My house is not worth that,” Crispell said.

The two-story, three-bedroom home on 0.13 acre has no dock or shoreline access, Crispell said.

“My house was built in 1885. I have a stone foundation and get water in the basement,” Crispell said.

21st Century Appraisals Inc., the county’s reassessment company, originally valued the home at $605,800. An appeals board later knocked $35,100 off the structure but kept the land at $400,000, for a new total of $570,700.

Crispell said Schwager had offered during the Dec. 1 conference, through Crispell’s lawyer, to reduce the rental property to a value of $95,000.

Crispell said he refused because his appraisal valued the rental at $50,000.

He bought the single-family rental property on 0.29 acre for $59,500 three years ago in a “bidding war.”

21st Century originally valued this property at $207,900, and a county assessment appeal board reduced it to $149,300.

Crispell said the county later contacted his attorney to offer a reduction to $105,000, which was $10,000 higher than the offer made during the mediation conference. He didn’t accept it.

Specialty Courts Director Sam Guesto, who is overseeing the mediation for the courts, said Monday that only two of the mediation cases heard to date have not been settled.

The county agreed to a total $538,900 in assessment reductions in the first 16 mediation settlements.

Unsettled mediations cannot proceed to arbitration until Guesto publicly files reports about them. Guesto said the reports will be filed soon.

The fee for arbitration will be $51, and property owners must file a form known as a “praecipe for appointment of arbitrators.”

Three attorneys serve on arbitration panels.

As of Monday afternoon, 1,044 property owners had filed for mediation, challenging their county assessment appeal board rulings, Guesto said.