More than two-and-a-half years after a Valley Road property owner sued the town over its denial of a tax assessment appeal, a court trial on the matter is scheduled to start in January 2022, records show.
The town’s 2018 assessment of 1124 Valley Road at $950,000 was “grossly excessive, disproportionate and unlawful,” according to a complaint first filed in May 2019 on behalf of the property owner by attorney Frank Murphy of Norwalk’s Tierney, Zullo, Flaherty & Murphy PC.
Owned since 2006 by Norwalk’s First Taxing District, the four-acre property includes a ca. 1750-built home. It’s located near the Grupes Reservoir.
In assessing the property, the town also “did not value the real estate as water supply land” as required by state law, Murphy wrote in a complaint that was re-submitted in September 2019. Additionally, Murphy wrote, the tax imposed “is manifestly excessive and could not have been arrived at except by disregarding the provisions of the statutes for determining the valuation of water supply, watershed and reservoir land, and in particular in not following the requirements of [state law] concerning assessment of water supply land.”
The town denied the claims in an answer filed January 2020, and the case has proceeded toward a remote court trial now scheduled to start Jan. 12, according to Connecticut Judicial Branch records.
The town has spent more than $10,000 in legal fees on the matter, records show. Since July 1, it’s spent $4,716.54 in legal fees, according to a bill approved by the Board of Selectmen at its Oct. 19 meeting. It had already spent $4,698 the prior fiscal year, past bills show, and $370 in May 2020.
The property on upper Valley Road made headlines throughout 2018 when its owners applied for a permit to demolish the antique house when it failed to sell. The town, preservationists and representatives from the New Canaan Land Trust (which owns an abutting 10.3-acre nature preserve) worked together to stave off demolition, in part, by offering to purchase the house. Eventually, the First Taxing District of Norwalk pulled its application for the demo permit.
The First Taxing District of Norwalk had originally bought the property at 1124 Valley Road for $2,250,000. The agency purchased another property on Valley Road (number 286), for $1,575,000, according to a transfer recorded Oct. 27 in the Town Clerk’s office.
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