| Author |
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Mlj
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2001 - 9:05 am: |     |
Questions for Mayor DeLuca or Mr. Ryan:
I watched most of last night's meeting. I am unclear as to what streets received an assessment adjustment due to heavy traffic. I heard Ridgewood, Wyoming, then not Wyoming, Jefferson, and part (?) of Maplewood Ave. A point was raised about Boyden. Not sure about Prospect. What are the streets?
Secondly, I was surprised that George Kraus, the realtor, was rather rudely dismissed by the TC when he stated that actual real estate sales numbers he accessed were inconsistent with Certified's new assessments on Ridgewood Road. This is a major issue in the entire reval. Why was he dismissed? |
Yvette
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2001 - 10:55 am: | |
Mayor DeLuca & Committee,
Can you explain in more detail about the motion to go forward with Sen. Rice regarding a bill for a phase-in. It appeared that you all didn't quite understand each other and in turn confused me.
Wouldn't this phase-in only benefit those whose taxes are going up?
Wouldn't it be unfair to those whose taxes are doing down?
It sounded exactly like the Relief Act of 1993, which you already said that it will not work out for Maplewood. If this is so, do you have a Plan B? |
Mwood
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2001 - 11:51 am: | |
Here you go - the squeaky wheel gets the grease. I'm surprised there hasn't been more coments this morning following last nights meeting.
Traffic allowances for Jefferson, Ridgewood, Maplewood Ave - what about Valley, Prospect, Parker, Boyden etc??? If only one side of town is getting this consideration is that legal?
This phase in seems to me that it will be even more divisive for the town - do they expect that people expecting a reduction based on the real values of their homes will (or even should) bear the burden of someone in a 600K home so the hit won't be so painful for them??? Do the people in the 600K homes plan to share the profits when they sell?? I don't think so.
I'm confused why Jerry who has been so forthcoming with information hasn't posted on here what this act is and what it would mean and that they are going to push something through quickly that could be worse than what is happening now.
Please post some info.
Although I missed some parts of the meeting I didn't see anything mentioned about the program for seniors that was posted here yesterday - is anyone on the TC doing anything to get the word out????? |
Kep
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2001 - 1:25 pm: | |
One issue that was raised over and over last night was not satisfactorily addressed. The question of exactly how many errors have been discovered during the reval review is still up in the air. The TC expressed the opinion that the neighborhood-wide and street-long changes now being made by the Assessor are ADJUSTMENTS, not corrections of erroneous assessments.
It seems to me that CV should have taken into account the traffic on the streets, the correct land values, etc, BEFORE they began their project. Are we to believe that the plan was always to have each and every Maplewoodian examine their own property cards, submit proper documentation and request a revision in order to determine which streets are heavily trafficked?
I consider each and every one of these adjustments, along with all the non-existant bedrooms, miscalculated land values, and obstructed views MISTAKES. And given the number of them (which is only represented by the number of people actually willing and able to follow up with all the research and paperwork, in other words: do CV's job) it is clear that this reval has been flawed from the beginning. We have all been spinning our wheels only to end up where the TC told us we would many weeks ago when they opened the first meeting on the subject after the CV leters had been received. They stand by the reval.
I propose that a running tally be kept in order to have a general idea of the percentage of errors. When we reach a certain point, say 20-25%, maybe then we can all agree that there are serious problems, and rather than cook up a scheme to phase in a flawed reval, we start over.
Adjustments my foot!!! |
Waynecaviness
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2001 - 1:48 pm: | |
It is abundantly clear that CV's work contained factual errors. The extent and significance of those errors is not yet known; anecdotal evidence suggests a significant proportion.
The TC has stated that it is their intention to hire an independent appraiser to review CV's work. So far, that is essentially all we've heard on the subject. (If I've missed something while I was away, please let me know!)
Can anyone (Jerry? Vic?) provide an update as to the status of any inquiries that the TC might be making into the quality of CV's work? |
Yvette
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2001 - 2:30 pm: | |
I would like to know if some of these errors were already on everyone's property cards and that the only reason people are noticing them is because they are questioning their assessment value.
Of course, I am not suggesting that all the errors were already there, but maybe quite a few. |
Eliz
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2001 - 2:49 pm: | |
Wayne - they passed a resolution last night to approve the hiring of an assessor to assess the work of the assessor 
I forget the guy's name but I think he's a lawyer. |
Jur050
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2001 - 2:59 pm: | |
You can't make this stuff up! |
Mag
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2001 - 3:15 pm: | |
Maybe I'm crazy. But it seems that feeling it necessary to seek the expertise of a tax court-savvy, assessor/lawyer type to review not only CVI's work, but that of our town assessor as well, is tantamount to admitting that the reval process and the resultant numbers from that process are inherently flawed. And ... after this is finally settled, I vow never to use the word "flawed" again. |
Njjoseph
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2001 - 3:21 pm: | |
Maybe it means the reverse, i.e. it would take an extremely knowledgable, tax court-savvy lawyer to find the flaws! And I vow to use the word "flaw" again. ;-) |
Waynecaviness
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2001 - 3:32 pm: | |
Thanks for the feedback on the resolution to hire an assessor to assess the work of the assessor! |
Mtierney
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2001 - 4:46 pm: | |
One thing I heard quite clearly at last night's meeting was Mayor DeLuca stating that Certified did a good job!! I was so stunned, I asked a man next to me if that was indeed what he said. He confirmed it! Now, if their job had been good, would we be adjusting or correcting mistates galore; hiring assessors to reassess; having little or no knowledge of how many adjustments have been or will be made; eliminated Prospect Street from the list of main thoroughfares; failed to appear at any of the hearings; etc. etc.? Would the majority of the public have commented that their treatment by CV was terrible? Until the TC can admit that CV was a poor choice, we're all just spinning our wheels here. |
Vicdeluca
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2001 - 5:05 pm: | |
Mtierney
You heard wrong. I said that I thought the TC was now doing a good job, meaning that after an admitted slow start we are doing better at getting information out and are continuing to explore all options before us.
Regarding Certified, I said at the high school meeting that I think their work was flawed, particularly with their interaction with the public, but not fatally flawed. There are remedies that we have implemented and people are pursuing. |
Gerardryan
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2001 - 6:39 pm: | |
Mlj: I was accused (by you, maybe) of being rude to George Kraus at the meeting. I was taken aback by the accusation, since I didn't think I was being rude... in fact, I asked George directly, and he told me that he didn't think so either.
I also don't think that you are reporting his statement (or mine) accurately: George made a statement about homes sold in the $100K - $200K range being assessed fairly close to sale price, and that most of those homes were in Hilton. Then he said that if you went to other parts of town you'd find a lot of homes where that wasn't so, and where the assessment was way over market. I told him that the numbers I had didn't show that, and that we ought to take a look at the numbers together. |
Gerardryan
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2001 - 6:58 pm: | |
Yvette and Mwood: There were two discussions about reval phase ins last night.
One discussion was a report by me of my analysis of the existing Revaluation Relief Act. I also posted this on another thread so I won't go into detail here, but in short the existing law proposes phasing in a reval by giving some people tax abatements, which we found to be somewhat prohibitively expensive as well as unfair.
The second discussion was led by Ellen Davenport, about a meeting she had with Senator Rice. The suggestion there was to create a new bill that would allow towns to phase in a reval by phasing in the valuation changes (as opposed to putting in the valuation changes and giving tax abatements). The discussion came out as favoring a broadly constructed bill that would
- permit towns to phase in valuation changes over 3-5 years
- roll in changes as a percentage of the difference between old and new assessments
- continue to allow for assessment changes from tax appeals, improvements, and neighborhood reassessments
- apply to everyone (increases as well as decreases)
If such a law is in place, and if the town decided to use it, we'd have to do it by ordinance, and we'd have to understand the implications across the entire town before we put it in place.
My opinion is that the idea is worth getting on the books and is flexible enough that we can construct a way to use it that would be fair... but there is nothing that would compel us to use it.
Mwood expresses surprise that I haven't posted anything about this here. This is because I learned about the idea midafternoon Tuesday in a phone call from Ellen. Late in the day I guessed what it might be and did a quick-and-dirty calculation on how it might work... but I didn't see any details until last night. I did some analysis after the meeting that I will post when I have some comfort that it is correct, and that it matches whatever the final form of the bill is.
Jerry |
Joancrystal
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2001 - 7:29 pm: | |
Jerry:
Is there any possibility that this proposed bill, if enacted as described, would be in place in time to help us with the reassessment deadlines we are presently facing? |
Kap
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2001 - 7:41 pm: | |
Jerry/Vic (or any other TC official that may care to respond), A straight-forward question. Does the proposal presented and voted on last night benefit only those facing possible tax increases at the expense of those facing possible reductions? No matter how many times I do the math, as I understand it, it seems to work out that way. Thanks |
Lseltzer
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2001 - 8:38 pm: | |
Kap:
Sure sounds that way to me. And given that market conditions can change over the transition period, it can create a situation where property taxes are continually running behind or ahead of assesments. This hardly sounds like a way to "fix" the property tax problem. |
Mlj
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2001 - 9:40 pm: | |
Jerry Ryan,
Just for the record, I did not speak at the TC meeting, I was watching on TV. So, evidently, there were two people who got the same impression regarding G. Kraus. And I disagree that I inaccurately reported his statment regarding assessment vs. market analysis based on sales - he gave Ridgewood Road as an example to illustrate this point. It would be a sensible idea to look at the numbers with him to settle the matter.
Please answer my question regarding the names of streets receiving an adjustment based upon heavy traffic.
Thank you. |
Alidah
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 7, 2001 - 10:32 pm: | |
I don't understand why everyone is getting so excited over the details of land value, improvement values, mistakes etc. It just doesn't matter!
The fact is CVI came up with neighborhood values first, based on recent sales, and then used all of these numbers and equations for land values and improvements to back into that number somehow.
I was at the meeting tonight and Galante said as much. Number of rooms doesn't matter, class of building doesn't matter--they will just adjust a number somewhere in the equation to get where they want to go. |
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