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By TONI COLEMAN tonic@leader.net
Tuesday, January 25, 2000 Page: 3A
WILKES-BARRE – Mayor Tom McGroarty is fighting to prevent a local property
owner from receiving a $10,000 tax rebate through the state’s Keystone
Opportunity Zone plan, claiming the owner falsified its application to the
state.
McGroarty is urging City Council to deny the tax refund request submitted
by the Perry Block Partnership, which owns property at 37-45 W. Market
Street.< The group's application for tax abatement under the KOZ law was
approved by the state although it did not have city clearance and has not
brought the building up to code as required by law, McGroarty said.
Larry Newman, a consultant for the Luzerne County Redevelopment Authority,
which oversees the KOZ program in Luzerne and Lackawanna counties, said it’s
the city’s fault that the application went through.
County officials tried but failed to get the city to review nine tax
abatement applications, including Perry Block’s. In an effort to meet the
state’s deadline, the county sent the applications through anyway, Newman
said.
“He (the property owner) made repeated attempts in vain to get the city to
respond,” Newman said.
Newman noted that out of the nine KOZ subzones throughout Luzerne and
Lackawanna counties, only Wilkes-Barre had problems following procedure. He
added that representatives from the subzones have met monthly since March, but
the city has attended only two meetings.
McGroarty was criticized last week when it was revealed his administration
waited until two days before the state deadline to forward 31 KOZ applications
to the county. Many business owners, who submitted their applications to the
city nearly a year earlier, feared their refunds were in jeopardy because of
the delay.
Properties in the KOZ program, a tax abatement program designed to foster
development, must meet city and state housing codes and owe no back taxes. The
city and county should certify the applications.
McGroarty said he held on to the applications until city code inspectors
could verify properties were not crumbling. On Monday, he offered the Perry
Block case as a justification for his delay tactic.
“Why would you give someone a $10,000 tax break if they don’t fix up their
properties? It’s insulting.”
Stephanie Jacobs, president of the Perry Block Partnership, 439 S.
Franklin, could not be reached for comment.
The mayor said Councilman Jim McCarthy, who said he was almost struck by a
piece of debris that fell from a second or third floor window, offers the best
description of the building:
“I find this building to be in deplorable condition, with rotting facade,
broken windows/frames, and a generally hazardous condition, detrimental to the
safety of the general public,” McCarthy wrote in a memo to the city.
McGroarty, who plans to be in Harrisburg today, said he will inform the
state of the problem property. Any person who knowingly files an application
that is false shall be subject to payment of taxes owed, interest, penalty and
shall be subject to civil penalties and criminal prosecution as a misdemeanor
of the third degree.
Call Coleman at 829-7236.