Taghkanic Press

Your Assessments and Taxes Versus The Public Official. It's amazing what you can find, if you know where to look. Lets take the assessments of the Town Supervisor, Betty Young and her Husband Town Judge, William Young and their son-in-law, NYS cop Robert Rochler. First take a look at the assessment site inquiry, in the Taghkanic assessment roll. You will see that Young, our Town judge, is being assessed for 2 residential sites, land 247,500 and total 430,100. This means that the house, a 1988 modular with 1482 square footage, is assessed 182,600. Something is not right here, let see why. If we look at the assessment we see Young is also being assessed for 50 continuous acres of land and is claiming 40 of those acres under Agricultural exemption law. If we look at the maps locate in the County Clerks Office of real property we see Young as 78 acres, calculated, or 64.9 assessed from the map dated 1976 and as you look further through the record you see that Young actually as a 5 parcel subdivision as viewed on map 10755 filed Oct 21, 1988. The maps laid out for public view does not show this. The official record shows that 3.1 acres went to Councilwomen Simmons, 3 acres to Zoning Board member and State Cop Robert Rochler, Supervisor Young keeps a 7.9 acre parcel with house and a 5 acre parcel, and very mysteriously 2 acres and modular went to the former chief assessor John Hogan, Map 10757 filed on the same day as the Young Subdivision. A very strange thing worth noting is that Young somehow regains this 2 acre parcel back from Hogan, yet there is no record of the transfer or transaction, not even in the surrogate court record, and has now has been sold by Young. Of course I may have missed something here but I doubt it. Now when I pulled the assessment record of the buyer of this two acres and house, guess what! There is no record of inventory, no deck, no full size basement, no garage, and no square footage, how nice! It gets better folks. When I pulled Young's top-cop son-in-laws assessment on his house and land I find its assessed for the 135,600 for the house and 55,000 for the land and guess what! There is no square footage listed for the house, no three-car garage, now how sweet is that? The only few answers to this is 1. Rochler, Youngs son-in-law never got a building permit which would have shown the square footage, 2. The Zoning Enforcement officer did him a FAVOR or the Assessor Arthur Griffith is just not listing it Quid pro quo. Now does the Assessor mean to tell us that Rochlers house is worth 47,000 less then Betty Youngs house, or is that the assessed value of the hidden 5 acre parcel that overlooks half of Taghkanic. Remember back when I stated Young's assessment has the number 2 on the residential site inquire. Give me a Break! It's amazing how, when your a New York State Cop, a Judge, or a Supervisor you can get away with this stuff. What amazed me more is that according to the NYS Board of Real Property Service, in a letter dated 3/13/06, applications for agricultural exemptions are kept only by the towns assessor. Now isn't that a kick, no checks or balances and no way of cross checking the information. So from the information at your finger tips it seems that our Town Supervisor, Betty Young, Town Judge William Young Jr. and Zoning Board member Robert Rochler have been cheating us with the help of Arthur Griffith. It appears that Young has been hiding the 5 acre parcel under Ag. exemption, a parcel must be 7 or more acres to qualify. Now lets do some math here. If we total up the Young acreage and subtract what was sold or transferred we have, using the lowest total acreage of 64.9, we see that 3.1 acres went to Sammons, minus 3 acres to Rochler, minus 2 acres to Pastor leaving 56.8 acres yet the assessment record only shows 50 acres. Shame on you Art Griffith. There is no possible way that an Assessor with over twenty years experience in Town matters just missed this since 1988. All the parcels should have been listed on the assessment roll since 1988 they were not, and are not listed. It seems Youngs owes us on the five acre parcel for town, county, and school back taxes. When you compare the assessment of the State Cop Robert Rochler's house with Youngs, Rochler needs to pay up too. And who was the Zoning Enforcement officer at the time Rochler put up his house? Was it the wanna-a-be cop Ed Waldron thinking he'll do a brother officer a favor or was it Dennis Callahan, former State Cop and Rochlers Pal. And how does the Zoning Board Chairperson Barbara Hermance fit into all of this? She is the Towns leading Real Estate Land Developer, does anybody really believe she doesn't know what's going on here? What also maybe note worthy is that, from common knowledge, most of us in town know that Bill and Betty Young placed a modular home on the two acre parcel, that was transferred to Hogan, for Betty's Youngs aging mother-in-law to live in. But after selling off parcel of land in 1993 she became ill and was admitted to the County Nursing home or Pine Haven as its called. As residents you should write and call the The N.Y.S Comptrollers Office, Chief Examiner 22 Computer Drive Albany, N.Y. 1224 or call 518-474-4044 and The N.Y.S. Attorney Generals Office Eliot Spitzer Bureau of Frauds and Protection Albany, New York, 1224 1-800-771-7755 Tell them your sick of the of fraud and the cheating in Taghkanic, New York and Columbia County by public officials. And that you want capable people of means to pay their fare share. Including public officials and Police Officers.