neither legal nor assessment advice :
RECOURSE FOR INDIVIDUALS The Star's series humorously appears to cite Toronto Councillor Mike Colle : that he likens MPAC to "The Kremlin" . Further that : "nobody is really holding (MPAC) to account in any way".
Remembering that MPAC works only for 444 client municipalities and reports to a governance board, there are some ironic similarities to what unhappy condo owners may discover in interactions with a condo board's legal counsel.
In 1997 assessment was transferred from Ontario's Finance Ministry professionals to a specialty non-government organization later named MPAC. During the pre-MPAC 27 years with Finance civil servants, like others I found my few appeals courteous and professionally resolved.
That's IF - IF - I arrived
well-organized and well-researched and with sound appraisal basis for whatever I might be arguing. BUT maybe not everyone found that.
FURTHER RECOURSES 1 -
MPAC RfR requests for re-consideration are pre-requisites to further appeal. Maybe they can even provide some resolution to the well-organized with "homework well done". Or get the parties onto the same page in a knowledge driven environment.
2 -
Appeals to ARB The Assessment Review Board ( a component of ELTO )
In 2010 and 2017 Ontario's Auditor General reviewed ARB. In 2017 the lack of monitoring adjudicator members including usual oral decision-making, was somewhat casually noted. Not everyone has found ARB as professional and competence-driven as my own positive experiences with the Ministry of Finance several times before 1997. As of the 2017 Auditor General Review, ARB member recruitment was weakly documented, consistent with lack of Board oversight of its own members' decisions.
One would have thought that courteous, well-researched, cogently presented submissions would likely result in positive professional outcomes.
That's particularly where an appellant arrives with well-organized, directly-addressing, hard copy,
registered sales data including registration particulars. But that
doesn't always work in the modern universe of ( some ) A.R.B. adjudicators.
And an ARB adjudicator could refuse even allowing a legal transcriptionist being brought by an appellant with some clairvoyance of a trip into an adjudicative Twilight Zone. And would an internal ARB further appeal do any good today or in past times ?
?
Example : One well-prepared, well-organized Building Scheme couple in 2012 appealed significant ( & stubbornly repeated ) MPAC over-assessment leaping forward from assesssment cycle to cycle. It was contrary to not only lower assessed current sales in the very immediate vicinity, but at odds with more than a decade of actual sales, such sales within the unique subdivision being totally un-monitored by the possibly under-resourced MPAC District. Sales within the geographically distinct Building Scheme subdivision have arguable similarities to condos or U.S. "gated communities", and the appellants were also careful to maintain "control" data from external sales to put their comparables "in wider context".
(
A credible explanation within their own MPAC Region may have been lack of MPAC staff and/or skillsets during the 13 years after transition from Finance Ministry assessment. )
BUT at the eventual ARB appeal Hearing they found that ARB's adjudicator member arrived in a casual mood and without even a copy of their formal appeal. Proudly declared preferred to work "tabula rasa". The ARB adjudicator reserved judgment including as to a critical but erroneous MPAC time adjustment made by MPAC mis-selecting a time adjustment factor involving a much lower-assessed nearby identical sale price closed weeks earlier and less than 600 feet away.
(
Remember the suspected lack of staff and /or skillsets ? AND at MPAC's AboutMyProperty portal "no valid sales" appeared to also mean :
"We are not even bothering to monitor lots of actual comparable sales registered in Ontario's Land Titles environment. . . . . But we will keep merrily rolling ahead unbalanced assessments ! " )
After almost EIGHTEEN 18 more months the adjudicator's written decision rejected the appeal despite the extremely strong valuation evidence
which the adjudicator appears to have lost or mislaid. Referred only to "papers submitted".
Neither did nor could try to engage with an identical sale price weeks and 600 feet away The appellant couple next submitted a further internal ARB appeal ( with all the proven LTO registered data ignored or lost or mislaid or just ignored by the mischievous member adjudicator ) . But the further appeal also was rejected
AGAIN without the appeal grounds ever being addressed in any way !
(
as in " We are rejecting it because we are rejecting it . . . " )
Their ARB experience had been a discourteous disgrace to credible adjudication. Maybe and hopefully that's rare ? Overloaded MPAC - they now could see - was
not the worst problem at all after going through the ARB experience from Hell...
3 -
JUDICIAL APPEAL WITH LEAVE ON 'QUESTIONS OF LAW' onlyOntario’s
Assessment Act RSO 1990 c. A.31 https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90a31#BK52 legislates rights to appeal after RfR to Ontario’s ARB Assessment Review Board ( under section 40 ) with potential further appeal to the courts under s 43 solely “on a question of law”. That's only with
prior judicial leave to
Divisional Court. Whatever that might cost could vary widely if it could even be quantified by non-litigators . . . .
So with respect to Councillor Colle it is not literally true that there is no recourse. . .
