Board of Aldermen 12-11-2018 Page 44
When we go down the street on Berkeley Street we have another family that moved in from the mid-
West, they came in, a renovation $85,000.00 done by a prior home owner resulted in a $55,000.00
increase but then the Assessing Office wasn’t happy with that and they kept running the numbers and
they moved that house from $400,000.00 to $615,000.00 until the homeowners screamed uncle in
2011, filed for an abatement got a reduction in 2013 and the house came down $200,000.00. We are in
that situation that the other house on Berkeley Street is in. We’ve been 5 years with it jammed down
our throat way too high and this, we are trying to get to the other side of this. | wish the Mayor had
given us a chance to talk to him about this, | expect my Mayor to understand the difference between a
tax bill and an assessment.
| was very concerned at the last meeting when you were positioning yourself to say that people with
young families, or we don’t want to charge more than $1,000.00 for a new kitchen or $1,500.00
because of their family situation. Our property cards don’t come with family photos, we have to make
assessment a fair issue for everyone. What the Mayor is talking about is a progressive form of tax, we
feel that we paid with the progressive tax, somebody looked at our house, our income level, the fact
that we bought the house for cash and decided these people can pay out the nose. We don’t want that
to happen. | want to make certain that the new people coming in are treated the same as the
established people. And | agree the influence of a Mayor or Alderman although the billing cycle fell
when you got elected for some reason in 2011, they were supposed to come back to your property in
2012, they never came back, | don’t even know if they had finished their assessment cycle. We don’t
know. The notes are a little messy on that card. It’s not that clean.
But what is interesting too with your card, your permit was opened in 2007, nobody followed up until
2011. The property card is updated on a 2010 page, but it wasn’t paid for in 2010, and in 2009 was a
reassessment year and your assessment was dropped $45,000.00 despite the fact that you were into
all these renovations. The property at Berkeley Street that | am referring to in 2009 was raised about
$50,000.00, they didn’t get a drop because they were doing, they had done renovations and the
assessing office was looking to raise it more. You got the benefit of a reduction while doing
improvements because nobody knocked on the door and came out and followed up on what has
happened in 2 years. You didn’t even get a knock on the door. That is the difference. And we just
want it to be fair Mr. Mayor. | am not accusing you of anything, | am not accusing the card | held up
with the City, the appointed position to the Board of Assessors that hadn’t had anyone come to it since
1994 despite 8 permits being pulled, 3 of monetary value. It is a connected person it is a well-known
person. Nobody comes, that’s not what happened to us. That’s not what happened to the house on
our street that is a connected well-known person that got a half value assessment for reasons |
understand now, a lot of bad mistakes were made on that property. That was the most heavily visited
property on Berkeley Street in 5 years with 6 official visits from the Assessing Office and in 6 official
visits nobody did the property card correctly. And a house equivalent to mine was assessed at $343
and we were assessed at $700,000.00. So our tax bill was $18,000.00 and our equivalent home was
$8 so please understand we are just trying to get where we want to feel like we are being treated equal,
we want to pay our fair share, but we want a system that recognizes that new people need to be treated
like the old guard and the system has to be equitable. Thank you.
Mary Robbins Good evening | will make this short because | guess we are running long. My name is
Mary Robbins, | live at 40 Berkeley Street and | have read in the newspaper about the assessment
situation and the particular problems with my neighbor and the way she has tried to contact the
assessors and what not. What! would like to see, maybe even on the web site of the City the
qualifications that these assessors have. What is their educational background and what specific
training do they have to be assessors? And how is the training here in Nashua how does that equate to
the training that assessors get in other cities in maybe New Hampshire or in New England just to see
what we are dealing with here so it seems a little less random than it seems to me just hearing about it
and reading about it. Thank you.
