Tom's Statement Regarding His Service On The Enfield BAA

Recently Santanella Campaign Operatives have been spreading false reports mischaracterizing Tom Tyler’s dedicated service to taxpayers while on Enfield’s Board of Assessment Appeals (“BAA”). To set the record straight this is what really happened:

During the 2021 revaluation, town administrators (including John Santanella) acted through Tax Assessor, Todd Helems, artificially inflating the Grand List three ways:

1.     Boosted real estate values by unacceptable means to increase tax revenue without jacking up the mill rate. That way the town rakes-in more money without raising the mill rate. Also, the town appears to embrace fiscal austerity while actually squeezing more in taxes from unwary property owners.

2.     Shifted the tax burden from business & industry to residential homeowners by excessively valuing residential real estate. In many instances, condition of homes was upgraded (say from “fair” to “good”) without any improvements whatsoever having been made next the age of homes was decreased in order to increase values based upon it now being a younger home - worth more money. The BAA called it the “fountain of youth” formula. For example, a home built in 1980 was arbitrarily valued as though it was built years later, say in 1990. These false assumptions unfairly increased the tax burden on taxpaying homeowners.

3.     Declared war on farmers (by arbitrarily disqualifying farms PA 490 Farm status) and Non profits like Mount Carmel, The Moose Club, Goodwill Industries and many others (by unjustifiably stripping them of tax exempt status). These Tax  orders were not supported by fact. However, it created a brand new universe of taxable property, deceptively adding tax revenues without upping the mill rate.

Soon after the public outroar over those outrageous Tax Assessor’s decisions, Tom Tyler was unanimously appointed by the Town Council to the BAA and became its Chairman. The BAA is a quasi-judicial board where aggrieved taxpayers received a fair, impartial hearing, thoughtful deliberation and just and equitable decisions, such as the following:

1.     BAA recognized and provided relief to taxpayers harmed by arbitrary and artificial increases to their real estate and/or personal properties.

2.     BAA ordered the Tax Assessor to restore residential properties to actual quality characterizations (back from “good” to “fair” etc.) and correct the age of homes to when actually built (say, from “1990” back to “1980”). The BAA restored real estate values to where they should have been - putting fair market value back where it belonged reducing property owners tax liability.

3.     BAA ended the town’s war on farmers by ordering PA 490 Farm Preservation status restored (Confirm with any farmer); and, BAA ordered tax exempt status be restored to Mount Carmel (confirm with Carl Sferrazza or Frankie “son of Tony” Troiano), Moose Club (confirm with Ken Kaufman), Goodwill Industries and other Non Profits arbitrarily stripped of tax exempt status).

Santanella and his operatives are entitled to opinions – Santanella is not entitled to rewrite history by false, misleading statements to smear Tom Tyler’s Campaign.