The tax reassessments taking place in the Jim Thorpe Area School District could have "decades of ramifications" on the borough, area agencies are saying.

On Thursday, a handful of agencies and a business owner who will see a tax hike of $8,000 more annually over what he pays now for his business voiced concerns at the Carbon County Commissioners meeting.Mitch Hanson of Somersault Printing in Jim Thorpe said that he was "surprised and bewildered by a 320 percent tax increase" as a result of what his business would be reassessed at through the appeal. Hanson relocated his business from Las Vegas to Jim Thorpe last year."I understand that at periods of time, buildings need to be reassessed," he said. "With the new assessment, my building, I'll be paying more in taxes than the Jim Thorpe Neighborhood Bank, Mauch Chunk 5&10, the Opera House. These buildings are three times my size and I'll be paying three times more than what my next-door neighbor is paying. It will force me to close my doors by next year if this goes through."He asked the commissioners if there was any way they could speak to the school board to see what could be trimmed from the budget instead of these reassessments."I know they just gave their teachers a small increase in record time when other school districts are going to strike and you're asking the new people that barely have their feet wet in this town (to pay)?" Hanson said."We want to be here for 20 years. It's not fair. We just want to feel like we're going to get a fair shot at being the newest people here."He warned that the district will lose its tax base. "This will crush us," Hanson said.New businesses hitKathy Henderson, executive director of economic development for the Carbon Chamber and Economic Development Corporation, and Jennifer Christman, president of the Jim Thorpe Tourism Agency, echoed Hanson's thoughts."I speak on behalf of local businesses, especially the ones in the Jim Thorpe Area School District who are getting hit with a tax appeal assessment by the county tax appeals board and school board," Henderson said."This is an issue that is extremely important to us, especially since we're trying to recruit new businesses into the county. This does not look well for other businesses, especially smaller businesses who want to come into Carbon County to relocate and try to be successful."We want to make the commissioners aware of how adversely this process is going to affect some of our smaller businesses and newer residents and I understand it is the school board. I understand you don't have much say over what the school board does," she added."I want to reiterate the huge impact that tax reassessment is going to have not only in our town but across the county, and words that come to mind are collapse and complete implosion of our town and everything that we worked so hard for over the last 20 to 30 years to bring this town back to the way it used to be," Christman said. "So it really is going to have decades of ramifications."ResponseThe commissioners said their hands are tied because this is not something they are doing, the county is only the entity that is responsible for hearing the appeals."The county and its board of appeals has a responsibility to hear the appeals once they are filed, so that's where we sit," Commissioner William O'Gurek said."We have a legal responsibility as a county to conduct those hearing and make a ruling on them. We're the middle man."Gerald Strubinger, a Jim Thorpe School Board member who was in attendance at the meeting, asked the commissioners to speak out about property taxes overall and suggested the commissioners turn down the gain they would get from the increase in taxes through the appeals.The commissioners asked Strubinger if the school board would also turn down the gain they would get from these reassessments, to which Strubinger responded no.Commissioners' Chairman Wayne Nothstein said that the county must pay the appeals board that is hearing appeals daily. Right now they are scheduled up until the end of June."It is a huge expense to the county also and it's not shared by any of the other entities," he said.The issue of the tax reassessment appeals came to a head on Monday when approximately 150 of the 600 home and business owners from the Jim Thorpe area who were getting reassessed approached the school board to plead to put a stop to the appeals.That evening, the district voted for a continuance, which was denied Tuesday by the board of assessment appeals.Board of assessment member Dwight A. Penberth said the reasoning behind the denial was plainly spelled out in the law, which provides for specific incidents that would warrant a postponement.Postponement requests can be made by mail at least five days ahead of a hearing. Continuances can be granted at the board's discretion, but are usually reserved for individual cases involving a sickness or death.While a request for a withdrawal of the tax appeals could possibly have gone through, the result would have been a waste of money, Penberth said."We had to move on, make a decision. We knew what the rules were, it didn't qualify, so we moved on," Penberth said.Attorney Kim Roberti, who pushed for the school board to outright withdraw the tax appeals, was not surprised by the board of assessment's decision to turn down the continuance."I would have been shocked had they granted it," he said. "I understand how impractical it is. One or two is one story. With 600 appeals, it runs every day of the week until the end of June."Roberti said Jim Thorpe Area School District's board of education will be holding a committee meeting to discuss the tax appeals on Monday night at the high school, and that they can still choose to put in for a withdrawal. Appeals that have not taken place can easily be withdrawn, Roberti said.