Tax specialists representing Porter Hospital LLC have filed new appeals of the 2012 assessments with the Indiana Tax Board of Review.
The appeals are on the new hospital site at 85 E. U.S. Highway 6 in Liberty Township and on the former hospital property at 814 LaPorte Drive in Valparaiso.
Porter is rejecting the new values determined by the Porter County Property Tax Assessment Board of Appeals on Dec. 17. PTABOA board president Joe Wszolek and member Vicki Urbanik figured the property at $117 million based on the building costs that Porter CEO Jonathan Nalli listed on the form he submitted for ten-year tax abatement.
Nalli’s form listed the construction value at $130 million. Since the hospital was reportedly 90 percent complete at the March 1, 2012 assessment date, the PTABOA set the new assessment at $117 million which Wszolek and Urbanik believed was also the market value-in use.
That is higher than the $34.2 million the County Assessor’s office originally proposed.
Porter had appealed the $34.2 million assessment and attempted unsuccessfully to withdraw that appeal the day the PTABOA heard the case in November.
According to Porter’s new petition to the IBTA filed on Jan. 30, it states it agrees with the $34.2 million assessment, arguing the land should be valued at $4.8 million and $29.4 million for the hospital facility.
It contends that Assessor Jon Snyder failed to overcome the burden of proof to raise the assessment and failed to provide market-value-in-use evidence to support the revised assessment.
On its other appeal for the Valparaiso property, Porter said it disagrees with the $22.3 million assessment given by the assessor’s office in 2012 and the $18 million revised value by the PTABOA.
Porter asserts that the assessor failed to overcome the burden of proof for increasing the assessed value and to consider all forms of depreciation. Porter says that property should be assessed at $4.8 million in land and improvements.
