Changes keep assessor’s office busy By: Gib Snyder, Observer Today

From the Dunkirk Observer

Mleczko took office when the then assessor, Andy Woloszyn, resigned to pursue other endeavors. Since then, Mleczko has been elected three times for two-year terms, and will run again in November, and likely will be unopposed once again. He said people call his office all the time with questions before they buy for himself or Molly Ganey, who is usually the first person seen upon entering in the office.

"Before they buy, while they're buying, about the exemptions, about lot sizes, what they can build, what they can't build and I pass those on to (Housing, Building and Zoning Officer Al Zurawski)," Mleczko added. "We get a lot of ownership calls. People are looking to rent and they want to know who owns this house, stuff like that, exemptions, tax burden, and since we're the first ones listed in the phonebook, we get them all."

One change since Mleczko took office has been the use of the Chautauqua County Land Bank program to address blighted properties in the county, including Dunkirk.

"Now the Land Bank has taken a lot of that, reclaimed some of those properties. I think the poster child for Land Bank would be the house on Eagle Street, where Ryan Mourer took that house and fixed it up. That would be the poster child of how the system's supposed to work as far as getting it, rehabbing it and putting it on the open market for sale," he explained. "I believe that's what the whole idea was, to get these homes rehabbed and back into an owner's hands, not for anybody who wants to get rental properties, that's the whole idea if they could work them all like that."

The city, along with the Land Bank, is currently in the process of demolishing four city properties. Mleczko was asked about the city taxes the properties had paid.

"It's hard to say, because of the assessed values. Right now it's not going to take anything off this year because they're taking them down after May 1," replied. "The ones coming down, if they've been neglected over the years and they're in foreclosure, nobody's been paying taxes on them. The county's been guaranteeing it, so it's a deal of get it to a neighbor, or whatever they're going to do with them."

Another concern gaining more attention statewide is zombie houses, where people just walk away and leave the house and their obligations behind. Mleczko said there were issues to be dealt with as a result.

"A lot of the banks sell their mortgages to a third party, or they have a third party pay their escrow accounts, so that's the code we have in there. When we call that bank to try to get some information, I don't know if they don't know the information or if they don't want to give the information, but there's a couple homes have been still in the original owner's name and they haven't been there for years," he explained. "There's one on Eagle Street, there's a few homes around, where people would be more than willing to buy if they could get hold of somebody to talk to, but they can never get that individual. I don't know if the people who have the escrow account coming don't have the information.

"That one on Eagle Street sticks out. People have been calling for four or five years, somebody keeps paying the taxes on it. It's just a big mystery of how they get to keep going and going. You'd think the bank would want to unload that and get out from underneath. If it's empty and nobody is paying a mortgage on it, nobody's paying an escrow account, why are they sending these checks out? That's another question."

In addition to questions fielded by the assessor's office, an effort is also made to make sure city residents take advantage of various exemptions, such as the STAR and Enhanced STAR exemptions.