By Tom Grace
Cooperstown News Bureau
October 16, 2007 04:00 am COOPERSTOWN _ Otsego County's taxpayers earned about $251,050 Monday at the county's annual property tax sale, held at the county highway garage on Linden Avenue in Cooperstown. ``We're still working on it, but I'd say it was a successful auction,'' Otsego County Treasurer Myrna Thayne said Monday afternoon. Each of the 26 parcels offered Monday found a bidder, although a few had to be offered a second time at the end of the auction. The annual event started at 9:30 a.m. as Thayne read the rules, which include paying 25 percent down in cash or certified check. Then, with Thayne and Steve Child, the county's director of Real Property Tax Services, scanning the crowd for raised hands, auctioneer Don Turnbull of Edmeston took over. Early on, two bidders were vying for a house in Unadilla and Turnbull encouraged them to go higher. ``It's only money,'' he noted. A mobile home and land on county Route 18 in Edmeston went for just over $20,000 after a spirted exchange, and the crowd of about 100 was having fun. One bidder, Grace Talma of Richfield, said she enjoyed watching others. ``I haven't been for a while, but it's interesting. Sometimes you'll see neighbors bidding for the same piece of land and the price will go higher than it seems to be worth. People just get swept along. ``But there's usually a reason why a property is being sold for taxes,'' said Talma. And she tries to determine that reason, that liability, before she raises her hand, she said. This year's property tax auction was originally scheduled for Aug. 6, but was postponed when a property owner, James Bredin of Oneonta, sued successfully to pay his delinquent taxes. Bredin had some of the most valuable land slated to go in this year's auction: parcels of 26.28 acres and 3.03 acres in the town of Oneonta. According to papers filed in the Otsego County Clerk's Office in Cooperstown, Bredin estimates his land ``is worth in excess of $100,000, as the land is located in the town of Oneonta, a very desirable location.'' If the tax sale had gone as planned, Bredin would have lost the properties for failing to pay about $2,000 in taxes. But he alleged that he was not notified in a timely manner that he was about to lose his land, and his attorneys, Harlem and Harlem of Oneonta, found proof of property owners being informed of their default was missing from a file in the Otsego County Clerk's Office. Faced with this legal obstacle, county Attorney Rodney Klafehn agreed to let Bredin redeem his properties and to postpone the sale. The missing documents later were found, and the sale was rescheduled. Thayne said the crowd at the earlier sale was a little larger. ``It was summer and we had tourists then; that was the difference.'' But the county's auction draws a good crowd, whenever it's held, she noted. The amount earned Monday more than made up for the delinquent taxes on the 26 properties, she said.
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