Kansas City Business Journal

The Legends Shopping Center and Nebraska Furniture Mart have agreed to pay more than $6.6 million combined in delinquent property taxes to the Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kan.

The Legends agreed to pay $3.856 million in delinquent taxes from 2015, bringing it up to date for property taxes owed, the Unified Government said in a release late Thursday. The Legends will make the payment by wire transfer on Friday, the release said.

The Unified Government and The Legends also agreed to settle their dispute about the shopping center’s assessed value, agreeing to set it at $105 million.

Nebraska Furniture Mart made a partial payment of $2.886 million for 2013, 2014 and 2015 based on the value company executives think the building is worth. The company contends that the building is worth $30 million; the Unified Government sets the value at more than $70 million. The dispute about the building’s valuation continues. The partial payment makes the company current for 2013.

The Unified Government had said July 14 that The Legends and Nebraska Furniture Mart had withheld a combined $12.5 million in real property taxes amid disputes over how much they owed, which government officials said increased the difficulty of crafting a 2017 budget. On July 17, Mayor Joe Reardon directed Hays to resume talks with The Legends and Nebraska Furniture Mart about the disputed taxes.

In a memo Wyandotte County Administrator Dennis Hays issued late Thursday to Mayor Joe Reardon and the Unified Government Commission, Hays said that “(t)he problem is not totally resolved, but we have made major progress.”

“So what does this positive news mean?” Hays said in the memo. “Well, it certainly eases the budget crisis we are wrestling with, but I need to be very clear — it does not take care of the problem. Even with these amounts being paid, the Unified Government still faces a large budget shortfall and will still be required to make many difficult decisions to cut expenditures in order to balance the budget.”

Hays said in the memo that The Legends’ tax payment “will relieve in large part the severe budget crisis” facing the Piper School District.

Reardon and the commission authorized Hays’ staff to continue negotiating with Nebraska Furniture Mart and requested a report on the talks’ status at the budget workshop session at 4 p.m. Monday.

Source : http://www.bizjournals.com