Board of Aldermen 12-11-2018 Page 43
be talking about my tax bill going down 20% when we pay close to 80% more than he does on a dollar
per square foot basis and over $10,000.00 more on a cash basis.
So | would encourage the Mayor to forget about my tax bill and to really focus on what is going on in the
Assessor's Department and the practices that have led to such significant differences. Property tax as
far as | can see is a zero-sum game. So for everybody that gets a sweetheart deal, somebody else is
getting the shaft and that’s kind of how it works. It will be a big win for the City if the current practices
can be improved so all property owners can feel confident that the office responsible for distributing the
tax burden in Nashua does so equitably and with a level of professionalism that is commensurate with
the important nature of that work.
Laurie Ortolano Laurie Ortolano, 41 Berkeley Street. Mike just gave you a nice summary of some of
the details of what happened with our property. | have kind of avoided the personal nature of it but the
Mayor has pushed it in that direction, so | am offering a little bit more. Mike is correct that the data has
been super helpful in giving us a perspective on what happened 5 years ago. | didn’t have a way of
looking at properties in the range of $675 to $725 where we fell out at $700; what those properties were
because | don’t have that access with the data base in the City. But with the KRT data base, we were
able to pull that out and there were 15 homes including ours that fell in that price range.
When you looked at the quality of those homes and where they were and the details of them, if left us
scratching our head on how did this happen to us, how did such a gross error happen to us? | am
looking at properties that first of all are built between 1988 and 2005, that’s the quality of the other 14
homes. Ours was a 1925 home; our acreage was .34, I’m looking at homes that are sitting on lots 1.12,
1.34, 1 acre, .08, 1 acre, 1.6, 1.2, 1.0, 1.3, 2.3, 1.8. Big lots, and | am looking at homes with square
footages 5,700, 4,086, 4,045, 4,200 4,200, 4,800, 4,300, 3,700, 4,800, we are 3,342. | am looking at
bathroom fixtures, 24 fixtures, 23 fixtures, 16 fixtures, we came in at 15 which was the lower end of all
the bathroom fixtures. And all of these properties 1988 and above, attached garages, air conditioning
all the modern features. We don’t have an attached garage, we don’t have air conditioning and unlike
the Mayor’s property, our renovations done in 2008, no wall has ever been moved, we still have all the
plaster, we have all the cast iron plumbing and lead, we still have part of the old wiring. So the level of
renovation that was done on our property was far less than the level of renovation done on his property.
And | don’t understand how it happened to us, that this happened.
One of the things that deeply concerns me when the Mayor brought up his card, he feels that he was
slandered by me, and | don’t feel that was done or that | am somehow implying that as a Mayor or
elected official he affected this valuation. | am not implying that. | am going to tell you that every
property owner that is being assessed by that Assessor’s Office, whatever that number is generated by
those assessors, it is on those assessors, it is never on the property owner. It is on the assessors and
what they are doing in the office. | am deeply concerned about ethics and conflict of interest issues and
| think it has to be addressed.
| am deeply concerned about people who are connected people who are well known in the City getting
these sweetheart deals and we look at ourselves coming in as out of towners, outside people, new to
the City, and we definitely got the shaft. The neighbor next to us that moved in 2010 because of our
assessment being changed, they received a letter their assessment was jacked up $200,000. Outside
of the Citywide assessment period. The reason? Because the renovated the old part of their home,
they renovated 2.5 bathrooms, no new bathroom was put in, they dug out and did half of the basement,
they knocked down walls and they put up new drywall like the Mayor did, they put in new plumbing, new
wiring and part of the kitchen was redone in the old section of the house. When the Assessing Office
calculated those improvements, it was a $200,000.00 increase on their tax bill; the same level of
improvement on your home resulted in a $32,000.00 increase.
