THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, December 5, 1994 TAG: 9412050027
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LINDA MCNATT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ISLE OF WIGHT LENGTH: Long : 151 lines
When county residents got their tax bills this year, they knew they probably would have to pay a little more. Real estate throughout the 319-square-mile county had just been reassessed.
But this is not your typical my-taxes-are-too-high story.
When Ben Bracey, one of 10 siblings who jointly owns an old family farm turned mobile-home village, got the bill for the business recently, he couldn't believe it. His family's share of the tax burden this year was a whopping $856.80 more than last year's.
``It had never happened before,'' says Bracey, part owner of Clyde's Dale Mobile Home Park, on U.S. 258 near Windsor.
``I thought whoever came out here to assess this place didn't know what they were doing.''
But the Board of Assessors - made up of citizens appointed to oversee the reassessment - and the private firm hired to do the work knew exactly what they were doing.
Owners of trailer parks throughout the county have been charged for improvements that tenants have made to their own mobile homes.
While the homes themselves are assessed as personal property at $4.40 per $100 of assessed valuation, such things as steps, decks, porches and storage sheds were assessed as real estate.
And the bill, at 72 cents per $100, went to the owners of the parks.
This is the first time Isle of Wight County assessors have done that.
``I don't feel like the park can be charged with taxes on somebody else's property,'' says R.L. ``Sammy'' Stephenson. He is a realty agent who owns the 100-lot Jones Creek Landing mobile-home park near Carrollton and got hit with a bill for an extra $500. ``Most all the park owners are up in arms over this thing.''
Stephenson says he plans to pay the bill after deducting the portion he was charged for his tenants' property. Others have paid their bills in full but hope for a refund.
They may not get it.
County Attorney H. Woodrow Crook Jr. ruled Wednesday that the assessment is legal and that the bills must be paid. He referred in his ruling to Virginia statutes 58.1-3280 and -3281.
``Decks and porches would be improvements under those statutes and would be assessed to the landowner,'' Crook said in a letter to Gerald Gwaltney, Isle of Wight County's commissioner of revenue. ``If they are in a mobile-home park, then they would be the owner of the mobile-home park's real estate.''
This new method of assessing mobile-home properties turned up when Board of Assessors members realized that houses are taxed extra for things like porches and decks, board member David Olsen said.
``We saw it in a book we got from Gerald Gwaltney's office and started talking about it,'' Olsen said. ``As we traveled around with the professional assessors, it reconfirmed our feelings that the county was missing out on taxes from property in the mobile-home parks that regular homeowners are paying for. We knew we had a legal basis, and we felt we found an untapped source of revenue for the county.''
As far as W.B. ``Willie B'' Copeland is concerned, they could have tapped it somewhere else. Copeland owns the 138-lot Windsor Manor mobile-home park in Windsor. His tax bill went up $500.
When the county first started discussing zoning ordinances governing mobile homes, Copeland says, officials emphasized they wanted the parks to be nice communities. He built his own storage sheds for every lot and expects to be taxed for those. But he didn't expect to be taxed for the decks, porches, awnings and screen rooms that mobile-home owners install to improve their own sites.
``If the law is not so they can tax the mobile-home owner, then they need to change the law,'' Copeland says. ``It's just not right the way they're doing it.''
In a county where rental property is at a premium and low-income housing is hard to find, mobile homes are almost a necessity. The county has about 25 mobile-home parks of various sizes.
Most of the parks are spacious and well-maintained, attracting first-time homeowners and military personnel stationed at local bases who are willing to drive miles to work to live in the rural community.
But when those people do move, they take everything with them, Stephenson points out.
``I've even had them pull up shrubs they've planted. I don't know if they can do that, but I never said anything.''
Tom Morelli, property appraisal classification supervisor with the Virginia Department of Taxation, agrees with Crook, the county attorney. Morelli says that personal property is defined as anything that can be moved without destroying it, that real estate is defined as land and everything that is on and attached to it.
But the problem with that, says Windsor Manor owner Copeland, is the land owner is charged for four years - until the next reassessment. The mobile home, with all its trappings, could be gone in six months.
Most other localities in Hampton Roads do not assess mobile-home parks Isle of Wight-style. That is, they don't separate decks, porches and storage sheds and tax them as real estate.
In Virginia Beach, for example, assessor Jerry Banagan says the parks are treated much like apartments, on an income basis. Suffolk uses the same approach, says assessor Deborah Bunn, as does Chesapeake.
The exception: Improvements to privately owned mobile homes on privately owned lots - not in trailer parks.
County Attorney Crook has suggested the park owners provide in their lease agreements that any real estate taxes be charged back to the tenants.
The Taxation Department's Morelli agrees with that approach.
``The tax bill is going to go to the owner of the park. I'd pass it on. That may not be a very happy solution, but it is a solution.''
Park owner Copeland, for one, doesn't think so.
``We're not tax collectors for the county,'' he says.
And not many tenants would be attracted to a park if they couldn't have decks and sheds, says R.W. ``Bobby'' Jones, a local businessman who owns a 70-site park near Smithfield and was hit with an additional $250 in taxes he feels he doesn't owe.
State laws provide that tax payers can take up assessment disputes first with the Board of Assessors and then the local Equalization Board, also made up of private citizens.
Board of Assessors members say they have done the right thing. Equalization Board Chairman Joni Griffin says her board members are charged with making certain that all citizens are taxed equally.
That board made certain that all mobile-home park owners were assessed for mobile-home improvements as real estate, she said - adding that, basically, they have done all they can do.
The next step would be Circuit Court. And that may be where this dispute is headed.
``If they can tax us this way, and it's unjust, they can do anything they want,'' Copeland said last week. ``The best thing for us to do is to settle it in Circuit Court - sue the county.''
``When are they going to start charging us taxes on our tenants' automobiles?'' Stephenson said. ``Is that next?''
And consider Mark and Sandra Quillen. They moved to Clyde's Dale in 1990, when he accepted a job at Riverside Regional Medical Center in Newport News. Since then, Mark Quillen has been struck with a bone disease that eventually will keep him in a wheelchair.
Because he already walks with a cane and has difficulty climbing stairs, members of his church, Antioch Christian, plan to build a ramp onto the deck of his mobile home.
The owners of Clyde's Dale won't be taxed for the ramp this year. But if the Quillens are still living there four years from now - and if the county is still taxing park owners in the same manner - the Braceys will get the bill. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by JOHN H. SHEALLY, Staff
Sandra and Mark Quillen, baby-sitting Hillary Baird, at home in
Clyde's Dale Mobile Home Park. They eventually will have a
wheelchair ramp onto the deck - for which the park owner would have
to pay taxes.
KEYWORDS: ISLE OF WIGHT COUNTY REAL ESTATE TAX ISLE OF WIGHT COUNTY
PERSONAL PROPERTY TAX by CNB