Board of Aldermen 02-26-2019 Page 5
Regarding the technology and having finished out abatement process | really came to an understanding
a lot about this abating process and | think it is so flawed for the homeowner or taxpayer to carry the
burden of proof, you know? It’s up to us to prove that our assessments are too high and to do that we
need access to the data and for us, you know, a benchmark point was the effect of your build issue on
our property card and that data isn’t available publicly at all on the website, on the computers down
inside the office, on your home computer. It required the printing of the property cards and | went after
like 100 because | was trying to look at my neighborhood, first of all, all of Berkley Street to look at where
| fell out, that is 55 cards right there. Then | didn’t want to just say | am only looking at Berkley because
people would think — | was afraid they would say — you are being too narrow. So | grabbed Chester, |
grabbed Raymond, | grabbed a few on Concord and all of a sudden you are up to $200.00. | don’t think
that’s right. | mean that information should be readily available and you can’t tie the EYB to the grade
either. The grade is not available on the web site down in the office for you to look at the cards as well.
When | started this process | did send an e-mail to Mr. Duhamel and | asked him if he would be willing to
help me or give me the grade information for Berkeley Street and | did not receive a response back. It
was really the State that said to me — Ask him to give you that data, that’s a reasonable request so that
you have access to it. And | never got it; so | ended up going in and printing it all. So | hope that we are
able to create, you know, a system where the accessibility is better. I'd love to be able to print out a
property card without paying a dollar and really have the information on the property card. | really
learned to read those and understand them much better than | did four months ago. You’ve got to have
the card to really look at the houses and make the comparable.
Also | think the search data base for abaters who go in and use the sales data is not very good because
you can’t narrow the search fields to the year the house was built or pick a range. So we live in an old
neighborhood, | went in and helped a neighbor who had a colonial house, | wanted to grab colonial
houses sold over the last two years; it came up with like 221. | can’t narrow the field because there is no
date range that you can put in. So that’s a lot of data to cull through and it is pretty easy now to adda
couple fields that narrow a search and give us a little more flexibility mostly so that when we are picking
houses and people are that they are picking houses that are the age that their home is and a good
comparable; that they are not looking at something that is 1995 when they are 1925. So it is just better
for the assessors to get an abatement done to that level of quality and it is better for the property owner
to be able to access data like that. So that’s that.
The last time | was here | talked to you about equalization ratios and | had done a little research down in
the office and | had only looked at some commercial properties and | found a commercial property that or
any of the commercial properties that had representation, namely CPTM up in Manchester or tax
consultant. The equalization ratio was being applied but when the property owner did not have
representation and was on their own, the assessors were not applying the ration. | actually spoke to
somebody about that in the office and they had questioned it as well and the answer was, from the
assessor was — the people don’t know the difference so it doesn’t matter. Well | beg to differ on that.
That is a ratio produced by the State and | have had extensive conversations with the State and their
position is the ratio is applied to everybody. It sets the equalization for the data base. The last couple of
days | went in and started looking at residential properties and how we handle the equalization ratio for
2015 and 2016. | hadn’t had time to do it before because | was so busy with my abatement and my
paperwork for the State, | had to push that aside and | said - Ok when | get that done | am going to back
and take a look at that.
| pulled 10 abatements for 2015 from one assessor, 4 of them were fire issues, so there was a different
proration form that is used for a fire, itis not the same as a typical abatement form so that knocked 4
data points out. The other 6 | grabbed, 3 of them received the ration, 3 of them did not. But the
paperwork is all done, the math is all there where the assessor takes the homeowner’s value, gives it the
88.5%, they put down their value of what they believe the property should be, they give it the 88.5% and
