When a College Closes: Bard’s CFO pushes back against Great Barrington’s tax bill for the mostly vacant Simon’s Rock property

COLLEGE HAS PAID ITS FIRST BILL, BUT SAYS GOING FORWARD IT WILL “BE PURSUING ALL AVAILABLE REMEDIES.”

The road from the Kilpatrick Athletic Center to the rest of Simon’s Rock’s campus, on August 30, 2026.

The town of Great Barrington has collected Bard College’s quarterly tax assessment of $131,734.51 but the college has made clear that isn’t happy about that bill or the ones forthcoming. A spokesperson told as much to the Berkshire Eagle in July, and Chief Financial Officer Taun Toay spoke to reporter Juliet Schulman-Hall for a story that ran just this past Monday on both Yahoo News and MassLive, in which he’s quoted as calling the college’s first tax bill “crippling” and the town’s assessment of the 275-acre property — $63 million — “inflated.” The first round of tax payments will total $263,469, with the second installment due in early November.

[Edit at 10 am, August 31: Great Barrington Assessor Emily Schilling confirmed by email that the new assessed value of the Simon’s Rock property is $35,693,900. She says by way of explanation for how she arrived at that number: “I reviewed …