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Pullen: These numbers don’t mean tax hikes.
City Hall was inundated with calls from homeowners Tuesday who received their new real-estate assessments in the mail — and gasped.
It was the opening shot of a confusing, sometimes painful twice-a-decade ritual: the revaluation of properties citywide.
Letters went out last week to owners of about 27,000 properties in town informing them of the new assessments. Some people received the letters Friday, others Monday and Tuesday. Others haven’t yet received the letters.
That immediately fueled complaints among neighbors and a surge in “panic” calls to the office of Alex Pullen, the city’s assessor.
Citywide, the grand list rose about 11 percent from five years ago, when the city completed the last reassessment, according to Pullen. Commercial properties rose about 16 percent in value, residential properties about 7 percent. No breakdowns are ready yet of how different neighborhoods fared. New Haven has approximately 22,000 residential properties, 2,500 commercial properties, 400 industrial properties, and 2,500 tax-exempt properties, Pullen said.
Because values change, and because they change more in some neighborhoods than in others. In parts of East Rock, apparently, some homeowners saw 15 percent or higher increases.
But that doesn’t mean their taxes will rise that much, if at all. Pullen has begun the process of explaining how the complicated process works of reassessing properties and citizens challenging those reassessments.
Pullen’s Point 1: More Than 2 Days To Challenge
The process begins with citizens scheduling an initial meeting, if they wish, with the private company hired to conduct the revaluation. The city has a new company doing it this year: Municipal Valuation Services. Homeowners can go to this link to schedule a meeting. The meetings will take place over the next two weeks at City Hall.
Some of the initial complaints to the city focused on what people claimed is too small a time frame to contest the evaluation. Because of holidays, some people said they have only two days available to be heard, Pullen said.
He said that in fact people will have up to two weeks (minus the upcoming Monday Christmas holiday date) to meet with Municipal Valuation Services, depending on when they received their letters.
Because of the concern raised, though, Pullen said, he plans to extend the time people can meet with the company. (Update: The city announced Wednesday that it has extended the schedule through the first two weeks of January. Details here.)
Also, the city adds this step for people to iron out quick problems early in the process. But it’s not citizens’ only chance to contest an assessment. Citizens have until Feb. 17 to go before the Board of Assessment Appeals to contest their assessment. And if they fail there in their quest, they can file an appeal in the state’s Superior Court.
The city, meanwhile, has to work to submit its final grand list by Jan. 31. Hence the short calendar for initial meetings, Pullen said.
East Rock Alder Anna Festa has also received calls from irate taxpayers.
“I have a lot [of] upset people with the timing of the letters,” Festa said. “I’m disappointed knowing that I have not received one of my letters yet for one of my three properties. So what timing does that give me?” She questioned whether the letters could have gone out sooner.
Pullen’s Point 2: The Process Hasn’t Changed
Some people complained that the process for evaluating properties changed because a new company took over the job, Pullen said. The city previously used a company called Vision Appraisals to assess properties.
Pullen said Municipal Valuation Services, the new company, uses the same process that Vision Appraisal did. The process focuses mostly on comparable sales prices for residential properties, and more of a mixture of factors — including income statements and costs to build, for commercial properties. Municipal Valuation Services uses the same software Vision Appraisal used, he added.
Every ten years the city sends inspectors out to check out houses in person. In between those ten years, the city uses a computerized system to reassess properties at the five-year mark. Right now New Haven’s doing the latter. (The city used to perform only one revaluation every decade. That caused turmoil because of how dramatically, and unevenly, values changed across town over that time.)
Pullen’s Point 3: Higher Number Doesn’t Mean Higher Taxes
The biggest misconception, Pullen said, involves equating hikes in assessments with hikes in taxes.
“Revaluation is not done to increase taxes,” he said. “I know people don’t want to believe it. It’s supposed to re-equalize the burden.”
Theoretically, if everyone’s property values go up — and the grand list increases — then tax rates could decrease, unless the city increases its overall spending. The real decision that affects overall tax rates occurs when the city passes a new budget each spring setting overall spending. The revaluation simply determines how the tax burden is spread proportionately across neighborhoods.
Five years ago, revaluation was still a painful process because East Rock’s values rose so much more than those in most other parts of town. Much of the city lost value. While Pullen doesn’t have a breakdown yet to release, he said the overall citywide list appears to have risen by 11 percent — which means if your values rose 11 percent, and city spending stays the same, your taxes could theoretically remain the same.
“WTF Moment”
Initial indications are that at least part of East Rock is again seeing steep rises, though.
Neighborhood organizer Lisa Siedlarz, from the “Sohu” stretch of East Rock, sent an urgent message to her listserv after receiving a letter telling her her home’s evaluated value had jumped 17 percent.
“Homeowners across East Rock are having a WTF moment,” Siedlarz wrote.
“I am a mid-middle class worker working at Southern Ct State university in Financial Aid. I own a house here because my house has been in my family since 1954. I could not afford to buy here now. I am on the verge of not being able to afford to live here now.
“$200 a month is a car payment. Or new furniture so desperately needed. Or three weeks worth of groceries. It would be outrageous to raise my tenants rents by $100 each. So ridiculous that I purposely put in my lease that it will never be more than $50.
“Yet the city thinks this monthly increase is NBD. It is a big deal. It is a HUGE deal. And we need to have a conversation about it….
“Homeowners. Renters. We need to have a conversation about this. It affects all of us. Gentrification is a real thing, and it is happening here. Is this okay? I don’t believe so. And I think we need to take action.” She proposed meeting with neighbors next week.
Justin Elicker has seen this movie before. He was the neighborhood’s alder during the panic surrounding the last revaluation. On Tuesday he praised the way the former Mayor John DeStefano administration handled that event. He said the administration did a good job informing people of the facts — so that they didn’t assume, for instance, that a 17 percent hike in their assessment necessarily meant a 17 percent hike in taxes. He recommended that the Harp administration follow that example this time around.
Click here and here for coverage of that last go-round. Click above to watch a video Elicker made at the time to do his part in helping to explain the process to people.