Tax Court vacates previous remand in McCordsville dispute

Three months after remanding a dispute to the Indiana Board of Tax Review with instructions to conduct another hearing, the Indiana Tax Court has vacated that opinion and ruled the claims by co-trustees are barred and untimely.

Nancy Daw and Stephen Hoback, co-trustees of Sagacious Sentinel Sycamore Revocable Trust, appealed an $88,400 assessment of the 54.05 acres they own in McCordsville. They argued their property tax liability was incorrect because the ordinance that annexed their farmland to the town of McCordsville was invalid. Also, they pushed back against nearly $3,000 in delinquent storm water changes and penalties, claiming the delinquency was the result of the town’s unauthorized imposition of a tax.

In its Dec. 5, 2018, ruling in Nancy A. Daw, Stephen L. Hoback, Co-Trustees of Sagacious Sentinel Sycamore Revocable Trust, v. Hancock County Assessor, 18T-TA-00009, the Tax Court remanded the case with instructions. The Indiana Board was to conduct another hearing on the co-trustees’ annexation and storm water claims, allowing the parties to introduce additional evidence and enter specific findings of fact thereto.

The town of McCordsville subsequently intervened and petitioned for a rehearing.

First, the municipality argued the court erred in remanding the co-trustees’ annexation claim because there were no statutory grounds for Daw and Hoback to challenge the annexation.

While the co-trustees had sought relief by means of a declaratory judgment suit under Indiana Code section 34-14-1-2, the tax court concluded their annexation claim was barred.

“The Co-Trustees, however, are not entitled to institute such an action because it generally is available to taxpayers of the annexing town only, not landowners of the annexation area, like the Co-Trustees,” Senior Judge Thomas Fisher wrote. “This method of relief is also unavailable to the Co-Trustees because they have not alleged that their land was not contiguous to the Town’s boundaries or that the Town failed to implement a fiscal plan.”

Also, McCordsville contended the court erred in remanding the co-trustees’ storm water claim to the Indiana Board because the deadline had passed for making the claim pursuant to the provision of the Storm Water Act. The co-trustees countered the town’s petition was improper because it asked the court to consider new arguments and theories.

Again, the Tax Court agreed with McCordsville.

It found when the town adopted three different storm water ordinances prior to April 10, 2007, it had to create and adopt the plan then hold a public hearing. At that time, the co-trustees could have written a remonstrance and, if necessary, filed an appeal in state court.

The Tax Court noted the certified administrative record does not indicate that the co-trustees used the specified statutory process to pursue their storm water claim in the prescribed period and appropriate forum. Citing Quiring v. GEICO Gen. Ins. Co., 953 N.E. 2d 119, 126 (Ind. Ct. App. 2011), the court found  the co-trustees’ storm water claim is untimely as “the object of the declaratory judgment statute is to afford a new form of relief, not a new choice of tribunals.”

The case is Nancy A. Daw, Stephen L. Hoback, Co-Trustees of Sagacious Sentinel Sycamore Revocable Trust v. Hancock County Assessor and The Town of McCordsville, 18-TA-00009.