Paris paying for ‘sloppy’ assessments

PARIS — Paris Assessor John Brushwein exited stage left Friday — bound for Poland and an extra $5,000 in pay — but, on his way out the door, he left selectmen with a thing or two to think about.

Four days before his departure, Brushwein sat down with town fathers for a 30-minute overview of property valuations in town.  Having spent the balance of his 14-month tenure fixing the “sloppy work” of his predecessor, Kevin McGillicuddy, Brushwein said the heavy lifting is far from over.

"Every property needs to be re-inspected, is basically what I'm telling you," he said.

McGillicuddy resigned in September, 2007, following a firestorm of criticism from a packed house of irate taxpayers, upset over a partial revaluation.  Although Paris tax rate dropped from $16.20 to $13.50 per $1,000 of value, some homeowners said their valuations had shot up as much as 48 percent.

Brushwein said McGillicuddy achieved his goal, setting local assessments at 90 percent of fair market value, based on recent sales.  In doing so, he ensured taxpayers would continue to enjoy the full value exemptions, including homestead and tree growth discounts.

However, Brushwein brandished another number, the “coefficient of dispersion,” or quality rating, saying that some homes in Paris are valued much higher, or lower, than the 90 percent ratio.  The target quality rating (defined as the average deviation from the average sales ratio) should be 10 or under, said Brushwein.  In Paris, it’s 16.

That, he noted, indicates that “people are not being treated equally.”

In the months after taking up the assessing reins in Paris, Brushwein dealt with McGillicuddy’s assessment by awarding out 145 abatements, cutting $1.6 million for local valuations and wiping nearly $23,000 from the tax rolls.

The problem, said Brushwein, was that McGillicuddy’s valuations tended to be “land high and building low.”  There is no way to amend one portion of the tax bill without revaluing the other, said Brushwein.  However, a town-wide revaluation could cost as much as $300,000.  Fortunately, said Brushwein, McGillicuddy did not adjust land values for undeveloped property, which helped set the average ration at 90 percent, despite some wide variations.

 In addition, Brushwein said, McGillicuddy had set up 25 different tax neighborhoods, where base values change due to local conditions.  That, said Brushwein, seems far too many for a small town like Paris.  However, with just 36 “non-distressed” sales in Paris in 2008, it would be difficult to amend neighborhood borders.

Of course, Brushwein said, he had a Herculean task just to identify the 25 neighborhoods, since McGillicuddy left no records of where one ended, and another began.

That, he said, was just one example of the data errors, mapping issues, and missing information with which he had to deal.

In some cases, McGillicuddy had combined lots in the same ownership, even when a road, a river, or another property, divided those lots.  The merger effectively eliminated the first acre base value of the second lot, wiping out, on average, more than $25,000 in taxable valuation.  Brushwein said he was never able to figure out how many of Paris 2,988 property accounts were the result of improper combinations.

Brushwein also described tax cards with bad or outdated information.  Some had improper building dimensions, in one case taxing for 450-square feet of space that did not exist.  In another case, no value was set for a large deck, clearly seen on a photograph taken of the property.

“Somebody took a picture of it,” said Brushwein.  “It seems real hard not to have noticed it.  There are errors that, to me, are just hard to grasp.”

However, the piece de resistance was the improper valuation of a building “in close proximity” to the town office.  For three years, said Brushwein, McGillicuddy failed to set a value for a new 3,000-square foot second story addition. 

On the flip side, Brushwein also found whole buildings that were still being taxed even though they no longer exist.

Finally, Brushwein noted a number of other discrepancies, including acreage measurements and building characteristics listed on tax cards that did not match data entered into the town computer system.  In a particular pet peeve for Brushwein, more annoying, he said, than Paris’ inconsistent lot-numbering system, , McGillicuddy seems to have made haphazard use of the “caps lock” function on this keyboard, resulting in a number of tax records entered in all capital letters.

“That’s the first thing I fixed," he said.

“For what I’ve seen, it’s a lot of sloppy work,” said Brushwein.  “If you have sloppy assessments, it’s very hard to make the taxpayers feel as though they are being treated fairly.”

Because a full revaluation is “unreasonable and financially unrealistic” in the current economy, Brushwein says the best his replacement can do is put together an in-house inspection plan, to visit properties one-by-one to verify that town records match what’s on the ground. 

As records are corrected and tax maps amended, the new assessor should monitor sales in order to eventually adjust values, paying particular attention to those lots listed far above, or below, fair market value.

“I think these issues need to be sorted out,” said Brushwein.

After his talk, former selectmen Janet Jamison spoke up from her seat in the audience.

“How can we protect ourselves in the future from incompetence?” she asked. 

“Well, the first thing is proper oversight,” said selectboard Chairman Raymond Glover.  “The previous town manager did not oversee the assessor properly."

Glover said it was current Town Manager Sharon Jackson who “took [McGillicuddy] to task for things he was doing, or wasn’t doing.”

“She brought a lot of things to our attention that we weren’t aware of,” he said.  “From here, it’s just proper hiring practices, checking credentials and conducting a good interview.”

On Tuesday Jackson said she has received "a couple" of applications for Paris' open assessor’s job.  The position will be advertised until February 27, she said.