Board of Aldermen 02-26-2019 Page 7
mails they wrote to John was — You should reach out to Chuck Reese up at the DRA and get his input on
this issue.
| called Chuck and he never had a reach out from John. Never had a conversation with him about this
issue and | wonder who is the City talking to about this? They seem to be hunkered in going — we don’t
do it. But it is an interesting discussion point, there is a lot there to look at. And the basis of that issue
for me was this whole EYB. | started looking at properties that for some reason the Assessing Office
corrects them very hard on sales data. They take a property, they view it as renovated or restored and
they drive the EYB up to 1995 or 2000. They pull all the depreciation out of the home or a vast amount
of it and they can move an assessment $100,000.00 or $150,000.00. On our house it moved it
$160,000.00, that’s a lot of money. So out went the depreciation, in went that new EYB and our
assessment went Poof — right through the roof.
But then | started, | pulled all those property cards and | found 27 homes, | pulled 100. | found 25 that
were corrected hard and graph out with EYB here and then a big gap in the EYB here after they sales
adjust. Then | found 27 that | pulled up all the MLS pictures and they weren’t corrected, but they were
very well done homes, meaning they got to stay at 1965, 1969 and not adjusted. One of the homes |
found, you will know Madam Chair, is 19 Monadnock. That was an interesting property because | pass it
every day going to and from Amherst Street. That was a property that sold for $260,000.00. At the time
it sold it was assessed for $147,000.00. The assessors look at the MLS data, they raise it $10K, they
bring it to $157,000.00 a year and a half, two years ago. They don’t touch the EYB, but the property was
very nice, had leaded doors, side lights, newer windows, granite posts, granite steps; inside nicely done.
It was not a 1965 or it might have even been 1959, it wasn’t that old a house, it wasn’t touched.
So KRT comes around and does the reassessment, this house sold for $260,000.00. In their model it
came out to $208,000.00 is the new value. It’s quite a bit lower than what it sold for because none of
that — all that interior work was grabbed by the assessors and raised in an EYB assessment. They got to
go without any adjustment at all. What | took is | looked at all those 27 homes that didn’t get adjusted,
well KRT ends up rating them like 7% lower on overall pricing because the City doesn’t use the data to
correct those properties. That is where | question — are some of us being chased? Really | have said to
you, don’t use that EYB anymore, make your MLS adjustments on the quantitative data number of
bathrooms, basement finished, the attic is finished; but when you go after the qualitative factors like
grade and EYB you are really messing with assessments. You have to make certain you are doing it to
everyone and they are not.
That is my issue. One of the assessors was asked to present to the Board of Assessors, they were very
smart about saying — Explain to us MLS. And | didn’t go to that meeting | was traveling but | read the
minutes after and | wrote a letter to the Board because | said — You were not given accurate information;
your assessor is telling you we are changing the number of bathrooms or basements that are finished.
They never mention that qualitative data and they are changing that too and that is what is driving a lot of
these disproportion assessments when it is not done fairly.
| have held steadfast that we should not do that and | am talking to other towns about that. And the
State has been very open in addressing the fact that that is an issue. | don’t know what to tell you except
|, you know, regrettably there is no one here to talk to in the City. There is absolutely no one for a person
like me to engage in a conversation with in this City; 5 months and | have never been invited into a
meeting to sit with anyone to really come forward. | remember Brendan when Rob Tosier came in and
some of you Aldermen got to sit in on that and you said to me — | really wished you had been there, |
think you could have asked a lot of good questions and gotten answers. That option wasn’t available to
me. No one invited me there; it's never been an option. And that is a very big regret of mine and | hope
someday the City figures out how to handle people like me and find a place for us to bring our questions
so that we can get some answers. | think | deserve that; | think anyone with the kind of questions I’ve
had deserves that kind of information.
