CACHE — Less than a year after Comanche County officials discovered a large valuation error of the Cache School District, the district filed a lawsuit against the county, saying the error costed the district millions in tax revenue.
The lawsuit, filed last week in Comanche County District Court, names Comanche County Assessor Grant Edwards, the Comanche County Equalization Board and Comanche County Treasurer’s office as defendants.
The school district lawsuit seeks $3,320,511.69 plus attorney’s fees, court costs and “all other relief the court believes appropriate.”
The lawsuit said Edwards and the county treasurer’s office failed “to properly determine property values within Comanche County and failed to implement a system of checks and balances to determine proper values, and failed to notify the district of the errors in a timely manner.” Edwards and the Comanche County Equalization Board failed to review the information provided and certified by the school district and, because of that, the district was not funded properly as required by state law, the lawsuit said.
Cache’s lawsuit also accuses Edwards of negligence both individually and as county assessor for a mistake made in 2021 when a member of Edwards’ staff improperly assessed the amount of the Goodyear Company.
About a year after the mistake, county officials acknowledged the error. Edwards said his office was unaware of the problem until June 2022. He said the issue also involved a conflict between the Oklahoma Tax Commission and the Goodyear Company.
“More than a year passed before the error was caught and brought to our attending on June 22 by Goodyear’s accounting firm,” Edwards wrote in a statement sent late year. “Over the course of that year, there was some communication back and forth between our office and the Oklahoma Tax Commission about removing and reinstating Goodyear’s exemptions, but nothing about the valuation was discussed and we were not aware of the error until a few weeks ago.”
It it’s lawsuit, the school district said its representatives had contacted Edwards “on several occasions to confirm this total valuation was accurate.” Each time Edwards was contacted, the lawsuit said, he assured the school the figure was correct.
Last year Edwards said in a media statement that Goodyear had provided several valuation numbers of his office and when that data was input into the system a clerical error was made that resulted in a decrease of tax revenue of $3,334,588.
“The rest of the deficit mentioned by Mr. Hance (Cache Public Schools Superintendent Chad Hance) came from three of Goodyear’s exemptions that the Oklahoma Tax Commission did not allow that were unrelated to the clerical effort,” Edwards wrote.
Cache’s lawsuit said the error resulted in a reduced assessed value of $15,246,999. The lawsuit also indicates that a Complaint of Erroneous Assessment and Order of Correction was presented to Edwards’ office. “This request was approved on June 23, 2022, by Grant Edwards and the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Board of Equalization,” the lawsuit said. “This resulted in a reduction of assessed value of $33,775,000.”
Edwards, the Cache lawsuit said, “failed to review the assessed valuation in this one account after the first presented and approved adjustment knowing that it was significant and could result in the improper funding of one or more governmental entities and under the collection of tax to fund the same is negligence.”
Those tax problems came at the same time the school district passed a $36 million bond package for school improvements. Funds from bond sales were earmarked to expand the district’s middle school by adding new classrooms, science labs, a commons area, a seminar room, a library and office space and the school’s classrooms and bathrooms and create a new parking area and add a pick-up/drop-off lane for the fifth/sixth-grade center.
Work on the project had already begun when the error was discovered.
Published estimates put the cost of the middle school project at about $15.85 million.
In addition, school officials said they planned spent $19.51 million to replace the schools existing fieldhouse. Proceeds from the second bond issue, a $1 million proposal, will be used to buy new buses for the district.
After the valuation error was discovered, Cache school officials held a special board meeting to consider their options. Minutes from the meeting show school officials passed on the opportunity to put a hold on the bond issue and, instead, voted 5-0 to split the school building projects.
Last July Hance issued a second statement to answer public complaints about the timing of the special meeting.
The meeting “allowed the school board to provide the administration with guidance about the future bond sale and construction project which will not impact taxpayers until the 2024 tax year,” he said. “The board’s decision during the meeting centered around the district’s original plan to sell $18 million in bonds to fully renovate the district’s middle school.”
In their lawsuit, school officials said they were contacted by the Comanche County Treasurer’s Office to find out why there was a significant funding deficit in the district’s general and sinking funds money collections to meet current financial needs and for the payment of the district’s bond dept.
Last Thursday, the Comanche County Board of Commissioners took no action on the lawsuit but indicated to Southwest Ledger they expected discuss the issue in depth at their Monday, April 3 meeting.
An agenda item on the March 30 agenda listed a discussion about the need to hire outside legal counsel to defend the county in the Cache lawsuit. Court records show that no hearing date has been set for the lawsuit.