SCRANTON -- St. Mary's Center in Scranton was supposed to be sold at a Lackawanna County Sheriff's Sale Monday. But, the church that runs the community center has already started paying back taxes while the issue of whether the property is tax exempt remains unsettled.
St. Mary's Center, the parish hall for St. Mary's Byzantine Catholic Church, owed back taxes. There's a dispute as to how much.
Ron Koldjeski of the Lackawanna County Tax Claim Bureau wanted nearly $200,000 going back to 2007.
"This year I said, 'I'm not going to wait on this any longer. We have to try to bring this to a head,'" Koldjeski told Newswatch 16.
A week before the center was set to go to sheriff's sale, parishioners paid the county $30,000. And that's all that the parish contends it owes.
"We were shocked, we were disappointed, and we were pushed into doing something about it," said St. Mary's parishioner Maryann Evanko.
Evanko said parishioners raised the money needed to keep the center from changing hands.
The priest at St. Mary's told Newswatch 16 that he is relieved that this part of the process is over and he is confident that St. Mary's Center will be seen as tax exempt.
St. Mary's Center became a non-profit in 2009. Now it's up to the Lackawanna County Tax Assessor to determine if it deserves to be tax exempt.
Parishioners said the center hasn't turned a profit since 2007.
"At one point in time it was the place to go, but now people are changing what they're doing and they're going for destination weddings, and there's a lot more places open now for them. So, we're trying to keep it as a parish center so that we can do our functions here," Evanko added.
What is now in dispute is whether or not the church owes taxes on St. Mary's Center from 2009 to now, about $140,000. It's a decision that could make or break the church.
"Right now, for my world, the tax claim world, what they've admitted to owing they've paid. So, going forward now, it's still a bone of contention. We're hoping that it's going to get resolved quickly, not to fester," Koldjeski added.
Next, the church parish has to complete a test that will determine if St. Mary's Center holds enough charitable events to qualify it as tax exempt. Then, lawyers will determine what, if anything, the church owes in taxes.