It’s Revaluation Time Again In Windsor

So, in the mail yesterday was a love-letter from the Town Assessor, regarding revaluations.

In Windsor, property revaluations are performed every five years, the lowest frequency permitted by Connecticut state law.  The last town revaluation, in 2003, was marred by the interaction of the start of the housing bubble (property values had just started to inflate…in some parts of town more than others) and a math error that turned a proposed average property tax hike of 5% (net effect of value increases and mill rate decreases) into an average increase of 11%.

Our tax bill actually went up 30%.

There was, of course, a big outcry within the town when folks started getting their property tax bills after the municipal budget was passed by referendum on the first try, as a few folks hadn’t done the math (“if the average property value went up 15%, and mine went up 35%, then that average 5% hike actually will look like a 23% increase to me….”).

That “fun” ran through my mind as I opened the revaluation notice to see a 17% increase in home value proclaimed.   There was a nice little letter in there, apologetically commenting:

although market values in general have slowed considerably as of late, this recent downturn has not offset the substantial value gains experienced since October 2003, (the effective date of our last revaluation).

Conspicuously absent was any statement of how property values changed for other town residents.  There was, however, an invitation to a meeting at town hall next Wednesday for a discussion on the revaluation.

Schedule permitting, I’m planning to pop in and see if I can get an answer to not only the “average property value change”, but also if the assessor’s office will share a distribution of value changes.

One of my pet peeves with Connecticut’s tax system is how towns are so dependant on state handouts and fairly restrictive property tax regimes for funding.   Capping tax bill changes or varying the mill rate by class of property (residential/commercial/industrial/agricultural) is generally not permitted, which gives rise to the situation we saw in Windsor in 2003…and I suspect will see again in 2008… where some of us are faced with pretty dramatic shocks in our tax bills.

Given the financial crunch expected by the state government, presumably those revaluation shocks will be aggravated by the perceived need of towns to replace the state handouts that will likely dry up.

Maybe if a few more folks understood the mathematics of the current mess, some traction might be found in improving the mess.