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David McChesney Petitioner V Township Of Fenton Respondent · 26-000898-TT

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TAXPAYER'S BRIEF IN SUPPORT OF APPEAL 

Before the Fenton Township Board of Review 

 

IN THE MATTER OF: 

The 2026 Assessment of Real Property Located at 

16179 Pine Lake Forest Dr, Linden, MI 48451 

Parcel No. 06-32-627-090 

 

CASE DETAILS 

Appellant(s) 

David McChesney & Caitlin McCarthy 

Property Address 

16179 Pine Lake Forest Dr, Linden, MI 48451 

Parcel Number 

06-32-627-090 

Assessment Year 

2026 

Issue on Appeal 

Improper "Omitted Property" Designation — Basement Finish & Bath 

Assessed Value (2026) 

$295,800 (incl. $29,600 "New and Additions") 

Taxable Value (2026) 

$278,193 (vs. $242,058 in 2025) 

Properly Capped TV (2026) ~$248,594 ($242,058 × IRM 1.027) 

Excess Over Cap 

~$29,599 — attributable entirely to the disputed addition 

Date of Hearing 

Wednesday, March 11, 2026 at: 4:45 p.m. 

 

I. INTRODUCTION AND RELIEF REQUESTED 

Appellants David McChesney and Caitlin McCarthy respectfully petition this Board to remove 

the $29,600 "New and Additions" adjustment from the 2026 taxable value calculation for Parcel 

06-32-627-090, and to restore the taxable value to the amount properly calculated under 

Proposal A's annual cap. 

The Township assessed the 2026 taxable value by treating the property's finished walkout 

basement — including a full bathroom — as newly discovered "omitted property," thereby 

bypassing Proposal A's annual cap on taxable value increases. This designation is legally and 

factually incorrect for four independent reasons:

●​ The finished basement and bathroom existed prior to Appellants' February 15, 2022 

purchase, as proven by multiple publicly-available MLS listings dating to 2013; 

●​ The taxable value was fully uncapped in 2023 following the 2022 transfer of 

ownership, and the 2023 State Equalized Value of $223,600 should have already 

reflected all existing improvements; 

●​ The Township's characterization of the assessor's failure to capture an existing, 

publicly-documented improvement as "omitted property" is legally improper — this is 

an assessor error, not an omission of newly-constructed property, and it cannot be 

used to effectuate a second, retroactive uncapping event. 

 

II. STATEMENT OF FACTS 

A. The Finished Basement Predates Appellants' Ownership 

The walkout lower level of this property has been finished and fully functional for at least 

twelve years. All three prior MLS sales listings for this property — spanning 2013, 2020, and 

2022 — explicitly describe, in detail, the finished basement with bedrooms/office rooms, a full 

bathroom, a family room, and a wet bar with wine/beverage refrigerator and cabinetry: 

●​ 2013 MLS Listing (sale price $248,000): Described a "finished walkout lower level" 

with a "large family room, wet bar w/ bar fridge & wine cooler, [and] 2 private offices 

(15x12 & 14x12)." 

●​ 2020 MLS Listing (sale price $347,100): Described an "incredible walk-out lower 

[that] features two large rooms that have functioned as bedrooms, home office or 

craft/exercise room, full bath & huge storage area. Spacious lower family room 

complete w/ wet-bar." 

●​ 2022 MLS Listing (sale price $450,000): Described a finished basement with "two 

large rooms," "full bath," "huge storage area," and "family room with wet bar." The 

listing also noted "Basement renovation is nearing completion," referring to a 

cosmetic refresh — not the original finishing of a previously unfinished space. 

Appellants purchased the property on February 15, 2022. They did not finish the basement; 

they bought a home that already had a finished basement. No building permits for basement 

finishing have ever been pulled on this property, which is consistent with the basement having 

been completed well before any current records. 

B. The 2022 Sale Triggered a Full Uncapping in 2023 

Under MCL 211.27a(3), the year following a transfer of ownership, a property's taxable value is 

uncapped and set equal to the State Equalized Value (SEV). The 2022 sale to Appellants 

triggered exactly this process:

Year 

SEV (Assessed Value) 

Taxable Value 

Notes 

2021 

$163,800 

$145,773 

Capped — prior owners 

2022 

$170,500 

$167,965 

Sale to Appellants (2/15/22) 

2023 

$223,600 

$223,600 

UNCAPPED — equals SEV after 2022 sale 

2024 

$242,900 

$234,780 

Capped; inflation limit applied 

2025 

$247,300 

$242,058 

Capped; inflation limit applied 

2026 

$295,800 

$278,193 

Disputed — $29,600 "New/Additions" added 

 

In 2023, the taxable value was properly set at $223,600 — equal to the SEV — reflecting the 

Township assessor's determination of the full True Cash Value of the property (including all 

existing improvements) as of that assessment year. The finished basement was part of the 

property's market value and should have been captured in that uncapping. 

C. The $29,600 Addition Equals the Entire Excess Over the Proposal A Cap 

Appellants' 2025 taxable value was $242,058. The 2026 Inflation Rate Multiplier, as stated on 

Appellants' own 2026 Tax Notice, is 1.027. Applying the cap: 

$242,058 × 1.027 = $248,594 (properly capped 2026 taxable value) 

The Township's assessed 2026 taxable value is $278,193. The excess over the cap is: 

$278,193 − $248,594 = $29,599 — essentially identical to the $29,600 "New and Additions" 

entry. 

The disputed addition is not merely one component of a larger assessment dispute. It is the 

entire basis for Appellants' taxable value exceeding the constitutional cap. Remove it, and 

Appellants are within Proposal A. The entire dispute reduces to one line item. 

D. The Township's 2026 Action 

During a routine field review conducted July 22, 2025 (part of the Township's 25% annual 

review cycle), the assessor noted the existence of the finished basement and bathroom. The 

assessor classified these as "omitted property" and, in the 2026 assessment, added $29,600 

in "New and Additions" to the taxable value, covering: 

●​ Basement Living Area: 1,200 sq. ft., Cost New $64,932, Depreciated Value: $48,699 

●​ Additional full bathroom (3-fixture): approximately $5,000 depreciated value 

Notably, the assessor applied depreciation based on the home's age precisely because — as 

stated in the Township's own correspondence — "we do not know when the improvement was 

made." That admission is central to this appeal: the improvement is of unknown and admittedly 

pre-existing vintage, yet it is being treated as a new addition to Appellants' taxable value. The

heavy depreciation applied is itself an implicit acknowledgment that this is an old improvement, 

not something recently constructed. 

Most significantly, the Township's own 2026 property record card — included in Exhibit G — 

describes the basis for the 2026 change in its Comments/Influences field as follows: "2026 

CLERICAL REVIEW...ADD BASEMENT FINISH AND BATH." The Township itself 

characterized this action as a clerical review — a correction of an internal recordkeeping error 

— not the discovery of new construction or newly-arising property. This admission by the 

Township is dispositive: a clerical correction to an assessment record is assessor error, not 

omitted property, and it cannot serve as the basis for bypassing Proposal A's constitutional cap 

on taxable value increases. 

 

III. LEGAL ARGUMENT 

A. Applicable Statutory and Constitutional Framework 

Michigan's Proposal A of 1994 (Mich. Const. Art. IX, §3) limits annual increases in taxable 

value to the lesser of 5% or the Consumer Price Index inflation multiplier. The General 

Property Tax Act, specifically MCL 211.27a(2), codifies this limitation. The cap is removed in 

two principal circumstances: 

●​ Transfer of Ownership: Under MCL 211.27a(3), the year following a statutory 

transfer of ownership, the taxable value is uncapped to equal the SEV. 

●​ New Construction / Additions: Under MCL 211.27a(2)(d), physical improvements 

added to the property after the applicable assessment date are added to the taxable 

value as "new and additions." 

These are distinct mechanisms. The "new and additions" category is intended to capture 

physical improvements made to the property by the current owner after the base assessment 

year — not to retroactively correct a prior assessor's failure to account for pre-existing 

improvements. 

B. The Basement Finish Is Not "New Construction" as to These Appellants 

The taxable value addition formula computes: Taxable Value = Capped Value + (New & 

Additions) − (Losses). "New and Additions" means improvements physically added to the 

property. By definition, an improvement that existed before Appellants purchased the property 

cannot be a "new addition" attributable to their period of ownership. 

Appellants made no improvements to the basement. They did not construct it, finish it, or add 

the bathroom. When they purchased the property, they paid $450,000 for a home that included 

a finished walkout basement with a full bath — a fact publicly disclosed in the MLS listing. The

$450,000 sale price already incorporated the value of the basement. The Township's own 

uncapping in 2023 was supposed to capture exactly this full market value. 

C. The 2023 Uncapping Should Have Captured All Existing Improvements 

The entire purpose of the uncapping mechanism is to bring a property's taxable value into 

alignment with its full True Cash Value at the time of transfer. MCL 211.27a(3) is unambiguous: 

"the assessor shall set the property's taxable value for the calendar year following the year of 

the transfer of ownership as the property's state equalized valuation for the calendar year 

following the transfer." 

SEV, by statute (MCL 211.27(1)), is 50% of a property's True Cash Value. The $450,000 

arm's-length sale in February 2022 was a market transaction for a property that included a 

finished basement. The 2023 SEV of $223,600 (implying a TCV of approximately $447,200) 

should therefore have already incorporated the basement's contributory value. If the assessor 

failed to fully value the finished basement when computing the 2023 SEV, that failure does not 

entitle the Township to circumvent Proposal A's cap in 2026 by reclassifying the omission as 

"new construction." 

The assessor had every opportunity — and a legal obligation under MCL 211.27a(3) — to 

assess the full property at the time of the 2022 transfer. The MLS listing for the 2022 sale is a 

public document that described the finished basement in detail. Any reasonably diligent 

assessor conducting the 2023 assessment would have had access to this information. 

Critically, the Township's own record cards confirm they did not merely fail to look — they 

actively reviewed this property in connection with the 2022 sale. The 2022 record card (Exhibit 

G) bears the notation "2022-SALES REVIEW CORRECTED SF," indicating that the Township 

conducted a specific sales review of the property following Appellants' purchase and used that 

review to correct the recorded square footage. That same notation carries forward on the 

2023, 2024, and 2025 record cards. The Township reviewed this property, updated its records, 

and still failed to capture the finished basement. That is not an omission of unknown property 

— it is a documented failure of due diligence during a review the Township itself initiated. 

Having conducted a sales review and missed the basement finish, the Township cannot now 

treat that oversight as newly-discovered omitted property and bill Appellants for it three years 

later. 

D. This Is Assessor Error, Not "Omitted Property" Under MCL 211.154 

1. "Omitted Property" Under MCL 211.154 

MCL 211.154 grants the State Tax Commission authority to add to the tax roll property that 

was "omitted from assessment" — i.e., property inadvertently overlooked from the roll entirely. 

This provision is administered through the State Tax Commission, not through a local 

assessor's unilateral addition to the assessment roll as "new and additions" to taxable value. 

The State Tax Commission's Bulletin 21 of 2017 makes clear that MCL 211.154 proceedings

require a formal petition process, STC review, and specific procedural safeguards — none of 

which occurred here. 

2. The Basement Was Always Known to the Township — Its Finish Condition Was 

Simply Never Assessed 

The basement was not unknown to the Township. The selected prior year record cards 

submitted as Exhibit G (2017 and 2025 building cards) document the basement's physical 

existence: 1,516 square feet of basement space is recorded in the excavation data, and a 

walkout basement door is noted as an exterior feature in every assessment year. What the 

prior record cards do not contain is any entry in the basement finish fields — Recreation SF, 

Living SF, or No Floor SF are all blank in every year prior to 2026. The basement space was 

present in the records; its finish condition was simply never evaluated or entered. 

This is confirmed by the Township's own 2026 record card, which describes the basis for the 

change as: "2026 CLERICAL REVIEW...ADD BASEMENT FINISH AND BATH." The Township 

characterized its own action as a clerical review — an internal correction — not the discovery 

of newly-constructed or newly-existing property. A clerical correction to a prior assessment 

record is by definition an assessor error, not omitted property. The remedy for such an error is 

not to add the corrected value as new construction outside Proposal A's cap. 

Under MCL 211.34d(1)(b)(i), omitted real property is "previously existing tangible real property 

not included in the assessment." The basement was included in the assessment in every prior 

year — its physical existence and dimensions were part of the record. Only its finish condition 

was unrecorded, which is a valuation oversight, not an omission of the property itself. 

3. Assessor Error — A Separate and Distinct Category 

Even setting aside the misclassification issue, where an assessor fails to properly value an 

existing improvement that was discoverable through ordinary diligence — such as a finished 

basement described in three publicly-filed MLS listings — that is an assessor error, not an 

omission of newly-arising property. The remedy for assessor error is not to bypass Proposal 

A's cap by treating the missed value as a "new addition." The remedy, if any, would have been 

to correctly value the property during the 2023 uncapping assessment, when the assessor had 

both the legal obligation and the opportunity to capture the full true cash value of all existing 

improvements. 

The Township's own correspondence confirms the assessor does not know when the 

improvement was made. That uncertainty must be resolved in favor of the taxpayer, 

particularly when extensive public records — three MLS listings spanning nine years — all 

document the basement's pre-existing condition. 

4. The Township Cannot Meet Its Burden of Proof Under MCL 211.34d and Long v. 

Putnam 

Under MCL 211.34d(1)(b)(i), the burden of proof rests squarely on the Township. Omitted real 

property "does not increase taxable value as an addition unless the assessing jurisdiction has

a property record card or other documentation showing that the omitted real property was not 

previously included in the assessment." The Township bears both the burden of persuasion 

and the burden of production on this issue. 

The Township cannot meet that burden here. The basement's physical existence appears on 

prior record cards — its dimensions and walkout door documented in every year. That means it 

was previously included in the assessment. The Township's own records defeat their own 

omitted property claim. As the Court of Appeals held in Long v. Township of Putnam (2024), an 

assessing jurisdiction cannot point to recent record cards showing a property feature absent or 

undervalued and use that alone to justify an omitted property addition — particularly where the 

evidence shows the feature previously existed and was previously assessed in some form. 

The court explicitly cautioned that allowing such a maneuver would permit townships to 

effectively uncap taxable value in violation of Proposal A, which is precisely the result the 

Township seeks here. 

Furthermore, 

as 

Falk 

v. Township of Meridian (2021) confirms, the Township's 

post-reinspection list is not sufficient documentation to satisfy its statutory burden. The 

Township must affirmatively demonstrate with historical records that the basement finish was 

never previously included in any assessment — a showing it cannot make when its own prior 

record cards reflect the basement's existence, even if under an incorrect classification. 

E. The Resulting Assessment Violates Proposal A 

By adding $29,600 in "New and Additions" to the 2026 taxable value, the Township has 

effectuated what amounts to a partial second uncapping — four years after the first, and based 

entirely on a pre-existing feature of the property. As shown above, the $29,600 addition 

accounts for essentially the entire amount by which Appellants' taxable value exceeds the 

Proposal A cap. Without this one disputed entry, Appellants' 2026 taxable value of 

approximately $248,594 would be fully within constitutional limits. 

F. Supporting Authority 

●​ MCL 211.27a(2)–(3): The Proposal A cap and uncapping mechanism; establishes 

that the 2023 uncapping should have set taxable value at full SEV for all existing 

improvements. 

●​ MCL 211.27a(7): Defines circumstances under which additions to taxable value may 

exceed the annual cap — confined to genuine new construction, not pre-existing 

improvements. 

●​ MCL 211.27(1): True Cash Value equals "usual selling price"; the 2022 arm's-length 

sale at $450,000 already reflected the finished basement's contributory value. 

●​ MCL 211.154: The formal "omitted property" statute requires State Tax Commission 

review; does not authorize bypassing Proposal A's cap for pre-existing 

improvements via local assessor action.

●​ Mich. Const. Art. IX, §3 (Proposal A, 1994): Taxpayers' constitutional protection 

against annual taxable value increases exceeding the inflation rate or 5% during 

continuous ownership. 

●​ State Tax Commission Bulletin No. 20 of 2017: Confirms the assessor must 

uncap to full SEV in the year following transfer, inclusive of all existing 

improvements. 

●​ State Tax Commission Bulletin No. 21 of 2017: Addresses formal MCL 211.154 

omitted property proceedings; distinguishes them from local assessor adjustments. 

●​ Menard, Inc. v City of Escanaba, 315 Mich App 512 (2016): Reaffirming that SEV 

must accurately reflect TCV at the time of assessment. 

●​ Coldwater v Consumers Power Co., 113 Mich App 184 (1982): Distinguishing 

between assessor error corrections and proper valuation adjustments. 

●​ Reuel S. Long v. Township of Putnam, Mich App No. 370113 (December 19, 

2024): The Court of Appeals vacated a Tax Tribunal judgment that had allowed a 

township to add a pre-existing improvement as "omitted property" to increase 

taxable value. The court held that under MCL 211.34d(1)(b)(i), the assessing 

jurisdiction bears the burden of proving the omitted property "was not previously 

included in the assessment" — and that showing it was absent from recent record 

cards is insufficient if the improvement previously existed and may have previously 

been included. The court explicitly warned that allowing townships to remove 

property from assessments and later re-add it as "omitted property" would effectively 

allow uncapping of taxable value in violation of Proposal A's protections. 

●​ Allan Falk v. Township of Meridian, Mich App No. 353741 (March 18, 2021): The 

Court of Appeals affirmed the Tax Tribunal's rejection of a township's omitted 

property addition where the township failed to produce documentation — specifically 

the prior year's property record card — demonstrating that the alleged omitted 

property was not previously included in the assessment. The court confirmed that 

the burden of proof on omitted property claims rests entirely with the assessing 

jurisdiction, and that bare assertions or post-inspection lists are insufficient to meet 

that burden without corroborating historical records. 

 

IV. EXHIBITS SUBMITTED IN SUPPORT 

Ex. 

Document 

Relevance 

A 

2013 MLS Listing 

Proves finished basement with wet bar, private rooms, and lower level 

predates current ownership by 9+ years 

B 

2020 MLS Listing 

Proves full bath, family room, wet bar, and finished lower rooms 

documented years before Appellants' purchase

C 

2022 MLS Listing 

Proves same finished basement and full bath were present at time of 

Appellants' purchase on 2/15/2022 

D 

2022–2026 Tax Notices 

Documents the full uncapping in 2023 and the disputed 2026 "New and 

Additions" entry; shows IRM of 1.027 on 2026 notice 

E 

Township Assessor 

Email (3/3/2026) 

Township's own admission that it does not know when the improvement was 

made; states "no permits since 1998" 

F 

2026 Valuation 

Statement 

Shows $48,699 depreciated value added for "Basement Living Area" and 

bath — depreciation confirms old improvement 

G 

Record Cards — 

Selected Years (2017, 

2023, 2025, 2026) 

Prior year building cards (2017, 2025) show basement finish fields blank in 

all years before 2026; 2023 card confirms no basement addition in 

uncapping year; 2026 card shows first appearance of "Basement Living 

Area 1200" addition and Township's own notation: "2026 CLERICAL 

REVIEW...ADD BASEMENT FINISH AND BATH" 

 

V. RELIEF REQUESTED 

For the foregoing reasons, Appellants respectfully request that the Board of Review: 

1.​ Remove the $29,600 "New and Additions" entry from the 2026 taxable value 

calculation for Parcel 06-32-627-090; 

2.​ Recalculate the 2026 taxable value by applying only the 2026 IRM of 1.027 to the 

2025 taxable value of $242,058, resulting in a corrected 2026 taxable value of 

approximately $248,594; 

3.​ Instruct the assessor to correct the assessment roll accordingly; and 

4.​ Grant such other relief as the Board deems just and proper. 

Respectfully submitted, 

David McChesney & Caitlin McCarthy​

16179 Pine Lake Forest Dr, Linden, MI 48451​

Parcel No. 06-32-627-090

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