LORAIN — The question of whether Lorain school board member Paul Biber actually lives in Lorain has resurfaced.

Biber came under fire in 2007 from critics who argued that the retired Lorain Schools teacher lived in Sheffield Lake and wasn’t actually living in the apartment he had rented to run for office. Biber said he provided the documentation necessary four years ago to prove he had moved to an apartment in Lorain and was eligible to vote and run for office there.

Lorain County Board of Elections Director Paul Adams said Thursday that he’s received a new inquiry, but not a formal complaint, questioning Biber’s residency.

Denise Caruloff, the same woman who is challenging whether Lorain Service Director Robert Gilchrist is voting in the propor ward, said she is considering filing a complaint against Biber.

The concern appears to center on records from the Lorain County Auditor’s Office that suggest that Biber’s primary residence is one of two homes he owns in Sheffield Lake. Biber receives a 2.5 percent rollback on the property taxes he pays on the two homes, 4709 Lake Road and 315 Harris Road.

The tax break is supposed to be used only for owner-occupied homes that serve as the homeowner’s primary residence, Chief Deputy Auditor Linda Keys said.

Biber doesn’t receive the tax break on the home he owns at 2128 E. 29th St. in Lorain, where he is registered to vote and which he said he considers his primary residence. The property is valued at $67,600, and Biber pays $1,099.66 in taxes on the property annually. If he had the rollback, he would knock $30.54 off his tax bill each year.

When Biber purchased the East 29th Street home in 2008 for $35,000, the person who prepared the form for him that would have entitled him to the tax break stated that the house wasn’t Biber’s primary residence.

“That’s an error, then, because the whole reason I bought the house was to have a residence in Lorain,” Biber said.

Biber, who declined to discuss how often he stays in the Lorain house, said he never had any intention of doing anything improper when he bought the property.

He also said he didn’t know about the tax issue.

“I felt obligated to own property and pay taxes in a place where I was going to be making decisions about taxes,” he said.

Biber said his wife, Joan Perch-Biber, and children still live at the Lake Road home, which the couple purchased in 1993. The property is valued at $266,500 and the couple pays $5,004.56 annually in taxes on it, according to county records. The rollback saves them from paying an additional $142.98 per year.

The Harris Road house, which is next to the Lake Road property, was purchased at the same time as the Lake Road home and is valued at $263,200. The couple pays $4,942.86 in property taxes each year on what Biber described as a rental property. The tax break saves them $141.22 annually on that property, county records show.

Keys said it’s not uncommon for her office to run across someone getting the rollback on more than one property. At the time the Bibers purchased the property, the question of whether the property was going to be occupied or used as a rental wasn’t typically asked, and the rollback was usually applied whenever a home was sold, particularly if the previous owners had received it.

Keys said she can’t speak to what happened in 1993, but the standard method of dealing with property owners who have been receiving the tax break on more than one property is to send a letter asking them to declare which piece of property is their primary residence, which is where the rollback will be applied.

That’s what will happen with the Bibers, she said.

Anthony Giardini, an elections board member who also serves as an attorney for Lorain Schools, said he doesn’t see an issue with Biber having more than one residence. The one that counts, he said, is the Lorain house because that’s where Biber has declared he will live and vote.

That’s enough, Giardini said, to make the Lorain house Biber’s primary residence.

Contact Brad Dicken at 329-7147 or bdicken@chroniclet.com.