Campaign Announcement

Announcement for Luzerne County Council by Mario Fiorucci.

100 years ago my grandparents moved to Sugar Notch from Italy to start a new life.

My parents and I lived in the house they bought, which had a small neighborhood bar on the first floor and our apartment on the second. The bar was called Marino's, which was my dad's full first name, and mine too. On the other side of the house were two small, two bedroom apartments. Elderly ladies lived in each one. They both used coal stoves for cooking, heat and hot water. The house was in good condition then and it had an old one car garage in the back yard too. The building was reassessed in 1967, the last time all properties were assessed in Luzerne County. The new reassessment won't go into effect until 2007, that's 40 years from the last one. 1967 was a good year for my folks and it was the first time that we all went on a vacation. We drove to Atlantic City, visited the Steel Peir and saw the famous horse jump into the water. Soon after that, the local bar business began to taper off as the coal mining industry slowed down. We closed our place in
1970 when my dad went on disability with a heart condition. He died two years later, just after the Agnes flood in the summer of 1972. In 1973, I got a part-time job in a supermarket and my mother started working part-time as a cleaning lady. In 1980 I left to go away to school and one of the elderly tenants in our apartments passed away. My mother couldn't afford to remodel it, so no one has lived in it since. In 1990, the other tenant left to live in the county's nursing home, Valley Crest. No one has lived in that apartment since. It would probably cost about $25,000 to get them remodeled. My mother passed away in 1997, and I have had to maintain the house and pay the taxes since then. Our side of the house never had extensive remodeling, and the roof and porches were all in bad shape. In 2000, when I was taking one of the homeless people that I put up every now and then, around to the Food Pantry, Soup Kitchen and for some other county services, I put my name on a list at CEO for a home improvement program. In 2004, I was called in to do the paperwork, and because I was qualified, they updated my home to code last year. If not for that work, I may not have made it through another winter. The poor condition the house was in, and probably was in for a long time, was never accounted for in our taxes. We were paying top dollar for our property since 1967, which was when the bar business was good, we had two steady tenants and the house was in good condition. No one ever went in to ask for a reassessment on our property until this year. I found out that we were paying 34% more than our neighbors, who have a house that is about the same size, with a finished basement and it is in superb condition, mostly because the son-in-law of the owner is a carpenter. Their house even had a big, two car garage! How could that be? Well, for one thing, since we were never reassessed since 1967, no one ever took our garage off the property tax rolls after it burned down in 1973. We paid for that garage until this year, that's a total of 32 years in extra tax. And even after I took pictures of the both sides of my house, my neighbors houses, and had reports printed up on them in the assessors office, I was not granted one dollar less in assessed value by the Board of Assessment Appeals in a letter dated to me on 10-07-05. I was stunned. That house across the street, fully occupied on both sides, in excellent condition and with a two car garage, was only assessed at $3,000 and my property stayed at $4,390. Then I had a bad feeling when I read who was on the Board of Assessment Appeals. The mayor from Ashley was Secretary. Now I have filed several reports about abuses in Sugar Notch, how all the 'connected family and friends' of a former official, never had to get a permit to do work and have additions, garages, decks etc, all put on their homes...and probably not put on the books. Having a mayor of any borough on this board is like having a fox in the hen house. I do not know all the ins and outs of how the Board of Assessment Appeals operates, but I have a feeling that a lot of people are left hung out to dry because they are not connected or are supporters. I was for re-assessment since 1999, when I wrote an extensive article about it in my free public interest newsletter. And because of my own personal experience, as I have described, I want the county to adopt an automatic reassessment update either on an incremental yearly basis or on a big, update it all - on a 15 year cycle. Because of my convictions on this issue and my background on all the other issues that I have presented to the commissioners, written about in the press or spoke about in the media, and because I feel qualified as I have
earned a Masters degree in political science from Georgetown University, I declare my intention to run for the office of Commissioner of Luzerne County in the next election for such office. Thank you for your time tonight..