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What's Red, White and Falling Down?

The Village of Red Creek has a major concern with one of its Main Street buildings and nobody has an answer to the problem...

The former Red & White building on Main Street in the Village of Red Creek has extreme roof damage and is most likely beyond repair and must be demolished.

Like many small rural Villages, Red Creek, located in the northern corner of Wolcott and Wayne County has fallen on tough times. Once a thriving part of Americana , changes in major travel routes led to a declining industrial base and fickle social shopping habits. The growth and draw of the mega-shopping malls spelled doom and gloom for many out-of-the-way, once familiar stops. One-by-one, many of the small Main Street stores and businesses disappeared.

With the closing of the Red & White grocery store, the building at 6811 Main Street sat empty for years. The original owner of the building abandoned the structure in lieu of back taxes, a scenario familiar to many villages and towns throughout Wayne County . Once foreclosed on by the County, the old building went on the tax foreclosure auction block.

The County tax auction can provide for some enticing real estate grabs where property can go for cents-on-the dollar in assessed value. A keen eye and savvy investor can reap a hearty profit on buying properties with a potential future.

Along with the savvy buyers comes a host of amateur property buyers with more stars in their eyes than business sense. Another group of tax property investors have the notion of a quick turnover and hefty profit, buy cheap, do little or nothing to rehabilitate the tax deal and sell as-is to potential dreamers.

During a tax auction on the Red Creek property, a Canadian man bought the property after seeing it posted on a County web site for $11,000. He soon slapped a for sale sign on the property and with no eventual buyers, the Main Street property fell back into the tax foreclosure circle, all the meanwhile deteriorating from no upkeep.

The former grocery store roof began to give away. There would be no hope of restoring the building to a former glory. No investor would want to invest in a structure with little, or no potential for profit.

The Village of Red Creek officials would like the building taken down. Vermin have reportedly inhabited the former store and there is potential fear of further weakening of the structure.

Wayne County has an agreement with the towns, villages and school districts, whereby the County is the entity responsible for property tax collection and distribution to the municipalities within the County. Along with that responsibility comes the added burden of ‘making good' on unpaid property taxes. If a building, or home is assessed for $100,000, the County is responsible for paying the taxes to the towns, villages and school districts, even though taxes on the building fall into arrears.

The original idea was that it was easier for the central County government to legally deal with a property tax scofflaw and potential foreclosure, rather than having several layers of municipalities line up in court for their fair share.

For decades the County tax lead worked with few glitches. The rapid decline and changes in village and town businesses and residential properties led to a major problem. If the County was the eventual owner of abandoned, unwanted properties, then the cost of demolition also fell upon County shoulders.

The County was handed bills easily for a hundred thousand dollars, or more by the villages and towns for demolition of condemned and failing structures. The toughening of environmental laws would no longer allow for a simple demolition. Now, studies of environmental impact, exposure to asbestos, once used as an insulation and building products for walls, tile and pipe, raised the stakes in removing an unwanted business, or residential property. Were there ancient buried fuel tanks on the property? Was there the potential of chemical contamination that would require County costs way beyond and hope of financial recovery?

It takes two years of back taxes before the County can move for a property to be placed on the auction block. It is at least three years before the sale could take place and even then, there was no guarantee anyone would be interested in the foreclosed property.

In several cases over the past several years, the County has opted to forsake eventual foreclosure in fear of ending up with a potentially contaminated property. Properties were taken off the tax rolls and fell into a state of limbo, where they would sit and further deteriorate.

Taking a property off the tax rolls would also stop it from being put back on the tax rolls for at least a three year period, thus making it difficult for anyone with the desire and money to consider the property for any type of development.

On Wednesday, the County Finance Committee of the Board of Supervisors met to discuss what to do with several properties located around the County that are undesirable from the stand point of a tax auction status. The Red & White building in Red Creek was one under consideration.

The new Wayne County Real Property Director, Shirley Bement, has presented a new idea. Instead of taking the abandoned properties off the tax rolls, have the local town assessors reduce the current assessment to a figure representing the true worth of the deteriorating, abandoned building. In the case of the Red & White building, currently assessed at $60,000, have the assessment set at a very minimal amount. Doing this would stop the flow of property reimbursements to the towns, villages and school districts. It would keep the property in a state of limbo, but would realistically reflect the true value of the structure, while keeping any hope of salvation and future investment a possibility.

To accomplish this, Bement must convince local assessors to accept a new low, almost non-existent assessment on tax foreclosure candidates that have little possibility of success.

The move would drastically cut the flow of tax dollars out of County coffers, but would also reduce the overall assessment value in the participating municipalities.

Both the Real Property Director and the Committee members agree that the temporary solution to dealing with abandoned properties is only a stop-gap measure and does not address the long-term solution of how to deal with unwanted, deteriorating properties throughout the County. "It makes sense for a 0% assessment on these things, but it really doesn't solve anything," said Finance Committee Chair, Palmyra Town Supervisor Dave Lyon.

Bement said she would contact the area assessors to see if they would cooperate, compile a list of properties that possibly fall in to this category and said she would report back to the Finance Committee in February. The deadline for placing delinquent properties on the auction block is March 1st.