Special Bd. of Aldermen — 11/26/2018 Page 13
that would be cheaper than hiring someone to come in and do it all at once or hiring somebody to do it every
year, you know a part of it every year. But that’s something | think we ought to look at.
And when you mentioned building permits not being the most reliable information because people lowball what
their improvement is, that we don’t require verification by the contractor as to what it costs and everything. I’m
thinking — Why don’t we do that? And if it is because the Ordinances or our Ordinances don’t require it, maybe
we need to change the, maybe you should suggest legislation to us that we should adopt so that we can verify
that information. | just want to avoid the honest guy hiring a contractor and being full up straight with getting the
proper building permits, this is exactly what it is going to cost, allowing people to go in and do the inspections.
He ends up, his property ends up being valued at its full value. Some other person, his neighbor for example,
low balls what the improvements are that he’s making, maybe he doesn’t even let the inspector come in and
look at it and so you end up with false information and that neighbor, his property doesn’t get assessed properly,
so his neighbor is paying more in taxes than he is and that is unfair. | think we ought to do whatever we can to
avoid that situation.
Attorney Bolton
Well we certainly should. And it may be appropriate to get more information at the time someone gets a
building permit about what the cost of the construction will be. But the cost of the construction is not in most
cases going to be equal to an increased value of the property. Most of the time it will be different. It might cost
$10,000.00 for someone to redo the bathroom in their home. But that may not add $10,000.00 to the value of
the house. The house may or may not increase in value at all. It may increase by only $5,000.00 rather than
$10,000.00. A more extensive renovation that adds an additional room and a second or third bathroom to the
house might cost $80,000.00 to construct but only add $30,000.00 to the value.
So between the expertise of the assessor looking at it and charts and tables that could be used as a reference
that assessor has got to use judgement in determining what value is added by any construction project. And
before | forget because | meant to say this later, when people don’t get a building permit, yes it is bad and the
assessments may be wrong because someone has got the finished basement that is not getting taxed. Worse
than that is it hasn’t been inspected by the building department, we’ve got an electrical inspector, we’ve got a
mechanical inspector that would inspect any extensions of the gas heat. We've got framing and structure
inspectors that guarantee that whatever is built is structurally sound and won't fall down, wont’ fall down and
shear off the gas line and the electric wiring and what all was just installed. That is every bit as important
perhaps more important than getting the tax assessment right. | mean if we have fires and unsafe structures
and so forth, that is truly life endangering and ought to be corrected. So that is an additional benefit that can
sometimes be realized by doing the full measure and list and discovering these problems.
Mayor Donchess
| had a few thoughts in response or additional information or whatever. The Board of Assessors of course, they
are volunteers, so it’s hard to expect them to be in there every day and they have jobs, the Chair is retired but
the other ones have jobs. But also they serving in the way that they do, | think they provide an independent
oversight in the sense that sure an appraiser goes in and makes an assessment of what a property is worth.
Then the homeowner disagrees, and where do you go with that disagreement? Now you could go back to the
staff, but the staff has already made a determination and they may think they are right and they don’t change it.
What the Board of Assessors is, is they come in from the outside and they listen to the abatements or consider
the abatement request and take an independent view. So it gives a local appeal so you don’t have to go
Superior Court, at least one level of appeal, you don’t have to go to Superior Court, to the Board of Land & Tax
Appeals, you can just go down there to 208 and at least somebody is going to come in and review the case if
you the homeowner think that there is an error. So they do provide that function although they don’t oversee the
everyday work.
