Page 44 - BusinessWest January 24, 2022

COVID and Property Value
It May Be Wise to Consider Whether to Appeal Your Assessment
By Laura Bellotti Cardillo
When property-tax assessments in Massachusetts came out at the end
of 2020, many business owners were surprised to find their values had stayed the same or increased. Those assessments were premised on income and expense data from calendar year 2019, and therefore did not factor in the beginnings of the economic impact of the pandemic.
Now that property-tax assessments for fis-
cal year 2022 are being determined, commercial property owners whose real-estate assets were negatively impacted by the pandemic should take another look. Assessors must rely on calendar year 2020 income and expense data to determine current values and assessments, and after almost two years of living with COVID-19, the question remains whether the pandemic is a temporary anomaly or the economic impact will be of longer duration.
If your commercial real estate has been hit hard by the pandemic, here are some best practices that could help you achieve a reduction in your property assessment and lower your real-estate taxes.
Provide Extra Data and Projections
If the pandemic has continued to hamper your property’s performance through 2021, pro- vide data through the third quarter of this year. While the assessment is based on numbers through year-end 2020, proof that things have not improved undercuts the argument that the pan- demic is merely a blip.
Projections for 2022, 2023, and 2024 can be
helpful in this regard as well. Many industries anticipate that a full recovery will take years. Dem- onstrating that you are not anticipating a swift bounce-back can support your argument that a reduction now is warranted.
Document Use of PPP and Other Relief Funds
In some cases, assessors have asked if busi- nesses received funds from the Paycheck Protec- tion Program (PPP) or other relief initiatives. It is highly unlikely that these funds would have been used in a way that would increase the value of
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property’s performance through 2021, provide data through the third quarter of this year. While the as- sessment is based on numbers through year-end 2020, proof that things have not improved undercuts the
argument that the pandemic is merely a blip.”
assessors put the receipt of these funds in proper context.
Values and Assessments Can Change Annually
Municipalities in Massachusetts have the abil- ity to adjust assessments annually. Because values can be recalibrated year to year, now is the time for assessors to lower the values for the commer- cial property types hit hard by the pandemic.
Assuming certain commercial real-estate mar- kets have begun to tick back up already or will begin to do so in 2022, assessors can make the
If the pandemic has continued to hamper your
Plotkin
Continued from page 43
douse my shoulder pads with it before every practice and before every game.” This review of his life and has led
to a different kind of learning experi- ence, this one concerning ongoing legal action against Johnson & Johnson — maker of the baby powder he put on those shoulder pads — which he is now a big part of.
“I’m on the creditor’s committee
— we just had a meeting recently; five of us are representing 40,000 claim- ants in this litigation,” he said, noting that these claimants are pushing back hard on J&J’s efforts to form a separate company to capture all asbestos claims related to its baby powder and then, presumably, file bankruptcy. “Every one of us who has this disease wants our day in court, and not have this piled into a bankruptcy settlement.”
While waging battles on these vari- ous fronts, Plotkin, who firmly believes he’s on the road to recovery and is
now back in his office several days a week, is continuing another fight — his decades-long struggle to return down- town Springfield to the vibrancy he
knew when he was young.
Long a staunch advocate for the
city and firm believer in the power of the arts as an economic-development strategy — he’s one of the organizers
of the annual summer jazz festival in the city — Plotkin said considerable progress has been made in recent years to make Springfield a more attractive place to live and work, but there is still much to be done.
He talked about the need to become creative with the hundreds of thou- sands of square feet of vacant office space in the city (again, see the story on page 38), to renew and escalate efforts to revitalize the properties on Main Street across from MGM Spring- field, and to continue work to use the city’s open spaces, especially its parks, to draw new residents — and busi- nesses as well.
With that, he turned his attention to his latest project, a giant mural that will occupy a wall facing Stearns Square on Worthington Street.
Working in tandem with John Simp- son, an art professor at UMass Amherst whose murals grace Elm Street and the
I-91 viaduct, as well as the Springfield Improvement District, Plotkin, through a nonprofit he created called City Mosaic, won a grant to transform that wall — currently featuring faded imag- es of cameras and related products sold at a store there in the 1940s — into a history book of sorts.
“It’s going to be a composition — we’re going to give a nod to many of the historic and important people from Springfield, right up to the present,” he said. “It’s going to be the largest mural in the city.”
For this issue, BusinessWest talked with Plotkin about the many battles he’s waging, and the progress he’s mak- ing with what could be considered
the big picture — figuratively, but also quite literally.
Joining the Battle
Plotkin, who has long prided him- self on taking good care of his body, exercising, and eating the right foods, said his cancer diagnosis nearly a year ago caught him off guard and left him searching for answers.
“To suddenly be told that you have
this terrible disease ... that was very traumatic,” he said, adding that, while he became consumed with under- standing how he contracted mesotheli- oma, the more immediate concern was confronting the disease.
He underwent what is known as a HIPEC (hyperthermic chemotherapy) procedure in August. After removing visible tumors through standard surgi- cal procedures, a surgeon will admin- ister HIPEC treatment, during which a heated sterile solution — containing a chemotherapeutic agent — is continu- ously circulated throughout the perito- neal cavity for up to two hours.
The 10-hour procedure was fol- lowed by three months of rehabilita- tion, said Plotkin, noting that he lost more than 50 pounds through the ordeal, suffered a few setbacks while recovering, and endured a few trips to the emergency room.
But he believes the worst is over and that he is on the road to recovery.
“I’m feeling really good right now, so
Plotkin
Continued on page 46
your real estate, so they should not factor into the fiscal year 2022 assessment.
Because PPP was designed specifically to cover payroll, utilities, and operating expenses, dem- onstrating in detail how these funds were spent (using materials you likely already have from your loan-forgiveness application) should help
necessary adjustments if and when the various sectors of the commercial property market roar back to life. u
Laura Bellotti Cardillo is vice chair of the property- tax and valuation practice at Pullman & Comley. She heads the law firm’s Springfield office.
44 JANUARY 24, 2022
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