About the Validity of the Winsted Reassessment

Every ten years property owners have had the legislated benefit of having their properly reassessed. Every ten years, they have found that their property has increased in value in a proportion which may or may not reflect the change in true market value. Every ten years, we have been told: "Don't worry, the mill rate will drop so you may not be paying more in taxes (for the moment) and everything will work out—just you wait and see." I have been told that there was a law recently passed that will require reassessment every four years—which, by the way, obviously gets the slave taxpayer twice: once to pay for the people doing the reassessment, and next to pay for the inevitably increased taxes. One more case of unnecessary overhead paid for by the taxpayers—for their own good.

The reassessment which has just been "finished" in Winsted has generated some really interesting numbers. For example, you might suddenly have a building lot that is assessed for $40,000. They tell you that is fair market value. The only problem is that it would cost you $500,000 to build a driveway to get to it. Or you could have some land which you got ripped off buying for $20,000 last year (but you bought it anyway because you liked it), and it is now assessed at $60,000—it miraculously jumped 300% in value in a year when land values have been stagnant at best.

Many of the assessment values are fairly reasonable although optimistic, but it seems that Vision Appraisal had what might be called a "city" attitude towards land. They would put relatively high values on land that in actual fact had no or very little real market value. The building lot mentioned above was typical. There were other cases where, for example, the land is under water anytime there is a significant rain. Just what is the market value of that land? You might say that it is valuable in that it gives privacy to the owner because nobody will build there—but in that case, it is even more valuable to others living adjacent to it: they don't have to maintain it, insure it and pay taxes on it for virtually the same benefits.

Winsted benefits from all land that is not developed. It provides watershed and doesn't demand police or schools. Vision Appraisal seemed to see land as some pot of gold to milk for taxes even when it has no real market value, and in some cases ignored the market value indicated by last year's purchase because they saw only highly valuable land. It was something that in a city might ultimately find a use other than open space, but here in Winsted has no real market value. They played two games. One was "market value," but if the market value established by recent purchase was not high enough to match their warped view of value, they inflated it by a whimsical factor. But if you can't readily reach the land and cannot sell it, what is it worth?

Needless to say, the town "powers" will like anything that inflates the grand list so they can boast in budget meetings, using the higher numbers as an aid to justifying an increase in taxes and mill rate. I remember the Board of Tax Review in years past, churning their way up our driveway, ignoring the sign: "No Vehicles beyond this point." They said, "You didn't expect us to walk, did you?" In fact, we had expected them to walk—just like we had to in such seasons of ice and mud. They said that if we put in a good driveway, our home would be worth what it was assessed for—and if we couldn't afford to put in a proper driveway and pay the inflated taxes, we shouldn't live there.

Vision Appraisal had a similar attitude in that a building lot was worth $40,000 because it was there with a house on it, even though it had no real market value because there was no convenient access. Even though nobody would pay their assessed price for the house and lot, the property was worth the assessed price merely because it was there. We offered to show them an appraisal that showed a real value for the house and lot, but they said that was not their concern—the matter should be brought up with the Board of Tax Review. If that is the case, just what is the validity of some of their assessments?

The big injustice will arise from the fact that Vision Appraisal was not uniform in its "bad" evaluations. Assessments will be inflated in enough cases to make the grand list look more impressive but not in enough cases to cause a groundswell of opposition. What this will mean is that individuals will have to waste the time and expense of resorting to lawyers and court—unless, by some miracle, the Board of Tax Review behaves unlike any board that I have yet seen.

"Don't worry, the mill rate will drop to compensate for the increase in assessment." Don't worry, only some of you will be …