Allan Appel Photo
The reval fact-checking gets started Thursday night.
Earl Geyer, Jr.‘s modest Valley Street house was built at 720 square feet. It was 720 square feet when he bought it in 1983. It is 720 square feet today. So he thought. But according to the revaluation notice the city just sent Geyer, his house has suddenly grown to 768 taxable square feet.
So the retired firefighter told reval officials Cliff Atkin and Gary Fields (with him in the above photo). They promised to send out a guy with a tape measure to investigate.
Geyer was one of a dozen citizens who came out Thursday night for a public info session on the new property revaluation, this one convened at the cafeteria of Hillhouse High School.
The city just mailed notices to homeowners informing them of their new assessments.
Thursday night’s presentation was a kind of dress rehearsal with the mayor in his role as Reval Explainer-In-Chief. It was the first of six sessions the mayor has scheduled in neighborhoods throughout the city. Their aim: to address homeowners’ concerns right at the start of what is traditionally a confusing, emotionally fraught process that accompanies citywide property revaluation.
Reval fact-checkers Tarello and Fields of Vision Appraisal and Acting-Asessor Alex Pullen await customers.
DeStefano brought along staffers from the Assessor’s Office including field appraiser Cliff Atkin and Vision Appraisal project director Gary Fields. They came armed with thick books of comparable sales, computers, and hand-held devices to field specific inquiries such as Geyer’s.
Most of the attendees at the respectful and almost sedate gathering had come seeking information, not argument.
“I’m here for the educational component,” said Eleanor Turner, who has lived on her house Anita Street for 31 years.
Judwin Street homeowner Kenneth Page with the mayor.
And Kenneth Page, who lives on Judwin Street in Westville, came to the session, because “I’m one of those guys who’s upside down with my property. I owe more than it’s worth.”
This is New Haven’s first full-blown citywide onsite property revaluation in a decade. So values have changed at different paces throughout the city, adding to the confusion; some people’s taxes will probably rise as a result (especially in East Rock), while others’ could drop. Overall, values rose 9.2 percent citywide since the 40 percent phase-in of the 2006 reassessment 9the last time values changed). Click here for a story that offers advice on how to calculate your new assessment.
DeStefano displayed a PowerPoint presentation running down the intricacies of the revaluation to those assembled in the Hillhouse cafeteria. Click here for a draft of the PowerPoint presentation.
The presentation elicited no questions. Then the mayor said that with some areas of the city seeing 30 to 50 percent increases in home values and others steep declines, officials will have to address issues of fairness in how to put the new values into place. That is, the poorer neighborhoods will want their tax decrease right away; meanwhile, the widow in a highly appraised East Rock or Prospect Hill home well might be on a fixed income now and struggle to pay huge new tax hit if the reval is implemented right away in full.
That discussion comes later in the process, DeStefano said.
Thursday night, and as his neighborhood tour continues, the city is in an earlier stage “Did we get your information right?”
So he urged listeners like Earl Geyer to approach the staffers spread out at the cafeteria tables to check property “field cards” to make sure the appraisers got the number of rooms right — and in the case of Geyer, the square footage.
“I went online, and it grew,” Geyer told Atkins and Fields of the Valley Street house that has been in his family since the 1970s. “Two bedrooms, a bath, a living room and small kitchen” with barely enough room for a table, he said.
“Any dormers in back?” Fields asked.
“None,” Geyer replied. “I got to use a ladder to get up” to the tiny attic. The basement is unfinished too. Nothing has been added, so how come the increase in square footage?
“It’s really a matter of how it’s described,” said Fields.
Field appraiser Atkin checked the measurements entered by the Vision Appraisal staff. He found an entry for a 30 x 24 dimension, meaning 720 square feet. However, the recent appraiser measured the length at two more feet, so that 32 x 24 explained the 768 square footage.
Fields said it’s possible that an appraiser previously or in the current process “could have measured the footprint of the foundation, not the actual house.”
“We need to check to see if our staff made a mistake, or if it was incorrect all along. It may be we fixed the problem. Our staff are human.”
Atkin made another quick calculation and determined that at the current 43.9 mill rate lopping off those additional 48 square feet would translate into a savings of $125 for Geyer. That was serious enough money for Geyer to make an appointment with Vision Appraisal (1 – 888-844‑4300).
“I’m going to have them re-measure.”
Fields said they have staffers with tape measures who will likely go out soon.
Chapel Street property owner Harry David and Vision Appraisal’s J. Michael Tarello.
Meanwhile, over at another cafeteria table turned property research station, the owner of the commercial building at 441 Chapel St., Harry David, was calmly posing his question to J. Michael Tarello. Tarello is the head of commercial evaluations at Vision Appraisal. David, who has converted some units of the former industrial building to residential, wanted to know the bases — rents, leases — upon which his phased-in 2006 assessment has gone up from $580,000 to the current $881,000.
What was the basis for that whopping 49 percent increase? Rental income or construction costs or comparable sales?
He also made an appointment with Tarello where all the detail would be presented.
Before the meeting broke up, Mayor DeStefano added that if the reval were fully implemented, or partially as done in 2006, or if the grand list were frozen as is, “there’d be a lot of shouting. [But] from different groups.”
The dates and locations of the other scheduled neighborhood reval meetings are as follows:
● 2 p.m., Saturday, Dec. 10 at St. Bernadette’s Hall, 385 Townsend Ave.
● 7:30 p.m., Monday, Dec. 12 at Edgewood School, 737 Edgewood Ave.
● 7 p.m., Tuesday, Dec. 13 at Bishop Woods School, 1481 Quinnipiac Ave.
● 7 p.m., Wednesday, Dec. 14 at Celentano School, 400 Canner St.
● 7 p.m., Thursday, Dec. 15 at Career High School, 140 Legion Ave.
Previous coverage of the revaluation:
• Will Your Taxes Go Up?
• East Rock Braces For Reval Sticker Shock
• Reval A Gift To Some, Will Sock Others