Schuylkill County Commissioner Boots Hetherington last week defended his vote to start the ongoing property tax reassessment.
Last week, Commissioners Chairman Larry Padora said he’d have continued to fight the lawsuit that brought about the reassessment harder than the County government did. Hetherington and Hess, both current Commissioners who were on the board when it came up for a vote, approved going ahead with the process that’s caused a lot of public uproar for more than a year.
The County was sued by Community Justice Project back in 2018. Schuylkill County says it did fight against the lawsuit but eventually determined that it wouldn’t be cost-effective to keep fighting only to end up losing. The lawsuit settlement forced the County to conduct a property tax reassessment, something it hadn’t done since the mid-1990s.
Padora also said last week that he’ll vote against certifying the results of the reassessment later this year. A majority vote, two Commissioners, is needed to certify the reassessment.
Hetherington didn’t say whether or not he’d certify the results of the reassessment this year but did explain why he voted in favor of starting it and why the County decided to give up the fight against the lawsuit it was facing.
“It started in 2018. We fought it for three years. So we didn’t lay down and play dead on that,” Hetherington said.
“We were advised by our attorneys it was fruitless to keep going forward,” he added. “It would end up with us reassessing anyhow. It was wasting money on a case we couldn’t win.”
FURTHER READING:
Schuylkill Commissioner Says He Won’t Certify Property Tax Reassessment
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