Cheektowaga attorney again sues town over property assessments

Gary Borek, a Cheektowaga resident and tax attorney, filed a class action lawsuit against the town and its former assessor, Jill Murphy, claiming the method the town used to determine 2023 property values resulted in “inequitable and unfair” tax distribution in the town. 

“We have the class action lawsuit on behalf of the neighborhoods that are being overtaxed according to the assessor’s own calculations,” Borek said during an interview with The Buffalo News. 

According to Borek’s lawsuit, New York State law requires all parcels be assessed at a uniform percentage of full market value. Municipalities must determine the full market value of a parcel and then apply a uniform percentage to that full market value to arrive at the total assessed value.

Full market value is the price a buyer would purchase a piece of property for and assessed value is the dollar amount assigned to a piece of real estate for property tax purposes.

For the 2023 tentative tax roll, the uniform percentage was 91% in Cheektowaga, according to the lawsuit. 

Borek claims the town should have done a reassessment to determine the full market value of each parcel as of July 1, 2022, and then multiplied that full market value by 91% to arrive at the assessed value. 

Instead, the town and its assessor reused the 2022 assessed values and divided them by 91% “to make up fake full market values in an attempt to make it appear that every parcel was being assessed at 91% of its full market value,” according to the lawsuit. 

That resulted in every home in Cheektowaga increasing in value by 9.9%, Borek said.

“Imagine if you had 35,000 homes that all went up by exactly the same percentage,” he said. 

In his lawsuit, Borek called the town’s assessment method “arbitrary and capricious” and said it “lacks a rational basis in fact and law.” He claims the…