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The city’s besieged finance commissioner admitted yesterday that his agency “didn’t necessarily know the effect it would have” when it switched the way it assesses co-ops and condos, suddenly raising the value for hundreds of middle-class homes by as much as 147 percent.
“We recognized that when we changed the methodology that we used, there would be changes,” Commissioner David Frankel testified at a City Council hearing. “Quite frankly, we didn’t expect them to be as significant as they were.”
Co-op and condo owners, especially in northeast Queens, have been complaining for months that the city increased the values on their apartments by staggering percentages, even as the sales market in their neighborhoods was stagnant.
Frankel initially defended the higher figures, saying his agency was playing catch-up for underassessments in previous years.
But in the face of a growing taxpayer revolt, he capped increases on all co-ops and condos citywide at 50 percent. Officials said that would result in tax increases of about 10 percent.
“We think our current values are close to accurate,” he said.
That didn’t mollify state Sen. Toby Stavisky (D-Queens), who lives in Cryder Point in Whitestone, which the Finance Department decided was worth 147 percent more in 2011 than it was in 2010.
“Cutting assessed values on co-ops from 147 percent to 50 percent is like saying you don’t have to drink a full cup of arsenic, you only have to drink a half cup,” she said at the hearing. “Either way, it’s poison — and so is this tax increase.”
Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan), usually an ally of the administration, called the agency’s actions “incredibly disturbing.”
She and Finance Chairman Dominic Recchia (D-Brooklyn) called on Frankel to guarantee that co-op/condo taxes this year wouldn’t go up more than 8 percent, or two percentage points less than his target.
In the face of such sustained attacks, the usually hard-charging commissioner was contrite.
“We could have done a much better job at outreach,” he conceded.