An Earful on Stamford Revaluation

On Tuesday, for more than seven hours, Director of Administration Mike Handler, Chair of the Fiscal Committee Jay Fountain, several other assessment officials and contractor representatives met with citizens concerned with recent property revaluations and how the grand list and mill rate has affected their annual taxes. 

Stamford residents were allotted 20 minutes each to express their concerns and talk to Handler, Fountain and city assessors and hear from Dave Arnold and Kevin Leen of Vision Revaluation, but none of Stamford's citizens were constrained to those limits. And Handler recognized there were a number of legitimate concerns.

"We're not here to convince [people] that [they're] wrong," Handler said. "[They're] not going to leave here happy. I know that going into this. We just want to make sure we know what the arguments are with the assessments so we can better tailor an audit if, in fact, we're going to go forward with that."

The charge for an audit of the assessment process has been led by Board of Finance member and democratic mayoral candidate David Martin since the reval numbers have been announced. Martin and Board of Finance chair Tim Abbazia have both been outspoken about calling for an audit, and Handler said both were invited to attend the day's meeting to hear the explanations and give input, but neither showed up Tuesday. 

"The fact is this is a political year and that's magnifying the effect of this," Handler said. "Any time you get 200 people in a room and they're all facing tax increases [it amplifies the issue.] That's why I thought it would be beneficial for us to sit down one-on-one for me to hear [their] concerns and for [them] to hear how we valued [their] property."

The reval process is not a simple one. When property assessments were released in 2012, most residents saw a decrease in their property values, something that mot suspected would lead to lower taxes. However, the mill rate was then set to a grand list that dropped more than $5 billion in value because of that revaluation. 
This meant a 24-percent drop in total asset value in the city. It also meant that when the mill rate was set, if home values didn't drop by at least 24-percent, property owners would still see an increase in taxes. 

In an instance where homes saw an increase in value, they received a tax bill that many saw as unusually high. In some instances, a tax increase some expected to be a couple hundred dollars was more like a couple thousand. 

"We feel like we've been unfairly assessed," said Lisa Butler. "We met with [Stamford Assessor] Frank [Kirwin] after receiving our tax bill, which was shocking. Our assessment went up 28-percent while others were going down. So we thought a 3.4 percent increase meant about $500. But we got our tax bill and it was actually $8,000. So you get your tax bill ad you have a month to pay it. $8,000 is jarring."

"Which is $40,000 increase since this is a five-year assessment," added Tim Butler. 
Handler agreed with their shock. 

"No one should get a letter in the mail saying their taxes went up 20-plus percent," Handler said while speaking to 191 Ocean Drive East residents Tom and Lisa Butler. "It's egregious and we understand that. But we're not here to discuss the tax. We're here to talk about why it happened." 

Complaints Tuesday had a number of similar themes throughout. Many wanted to know why their homes were valued where they were compared to neighboring properties. 

"I'm paying the same as all my three neighbors, who all have new kitchens, new bathrooms,'" said Barbara Lecornec of 61 Seaview Avenue, Unit F62. "How come we al have the same dollar value? So if they didn't take out a permit [I have to pay?]"

The most difficult complaints to address were the ones Handler knew could be valid concerns but had no way of combating. Homeowners who were found to have physically altered their property to make it more valuable but did so legally through proper city permitting wanted to know why neighbors who had, say, finished a basement weren't hit with the same increases. Handler said it was evident the system was flawed. 

"We should be inspecting every [property] if your neighbors are getting improvements and not reporting them to the city. We should know that," Handler said. "But if they're not doing it, we'll catch it when they sell their house."

"So if they're not doing it, I'm being penalized then?" Lecornec asked. 

"Well, you are, but not because of us. It's because your neighbors are cheating," he said. "If your neighbor goes to the store and steals a loaf of bread, your price goes up for a loaf of bread when you go to buy it. But that's not my fault. It's your neighbor's fault."

It's also not a pinpoint precision system. During the reval process, the city looked at property values of homes sold in 2007 that were again sold in 2012. That limited data gave Vision a basis for what homes were worth. They applied that data to homes within Stamford's neighborhood boundaries to calculate the value of all of 38,000 assets, 34,00 of which are residential properties, and 52-percent of which saw a property tax decrease. 

"This is a mass appraisal," Handler said. "This is not designed to be laser precision and get it down to the very penny."

However, he pointed out that while there were instances where the system had flaws, it was ultimately a self-correcting system. Homeowners that sought to have values reduced by the Board of Assessment Appeals found that those reductions were ignored during reval so a home's true value would be known. This led to some of the large property tax jumps brought before Handler Tuesday. But he said that was the whole point of the reval system, to evenly distribute burden where it had not been before. 

"It's not a perfect science... [but] that's the design of reval, that's what the state mandates us to do" he said early on to a homeowner upset that their property was valued higher than they believed it should have been. "It's supposed to normalize properties to what their current values are, not to even them out throughout the entire city."

Over the course of the day, Stamford officials received one instance of a clerical error, the only scenario in which the assessors, by law, could change the tax rate issued to a property owner. A home's square footage was improperly entered onto it's card and raised the value of a home, but outside of that, it was Handler doing what he could to lend an ear and give as best an explanation as he could. Overall, he felt the day went well. 

"I had no expectations for today as I wasn't involved in the assessment process," Handler said. "I had no preset expectations but, with that said, I got to listen to every complaint that walked in and hear the concerns of people who needed to test whether their assessment was appropriate."

Fountain said taking in the complaints of citizens was part of his duty and a city representative and member of the fiscal committee. Fountain, by the end of the day, was still a supporter of the idea of an audit of the reval process.

"It's my responsibility, and as chair of the Fiscal Committee, we needed to have someone present who could give input to the Board of Finance about what we should be doing," Fountain said. "We wanted to see what the discourse was and hear from people who felt their assessments were not correct. They didn't seem to have a lot of information or material showing any errors. But I think we need to have something objective done to show the assessments were accurate. It didn't sway me, I think we need to have an audit. We're only seeing people from a small sample here today. We need to have a statistically valid sample citywide."

Handler didn't agree with spending $100,000 of taxpayer money to perform an audit of a process where a small group of people expressed dissatisfaction when so many cases he'd investigated have proven so far to be feelings about conflicting arms of the process and anger over raised taxes. 

He said spending a day reviewing various concerns gave him better insight into how people were being affected and the positions from which they were approaching the process with their frustrations. And that's where Handler strove to explain that, while they might be unsatisfied with the result, legally the city's hands are tied. Tax rates can not be reviewed, he said, only assessments can be appealed for adjustment, something citizens would have to wait a year to do before the Board of Assessment Appeals. 

"It seems most people are upset with their tax increases and not their assessment," he said. "Most people that came in today ultimately agreed with their assessment, they just didn't like the increase tied to it."

Many times throughout the day, Handler reminded Stamford residents he was a member of an outgoing administration and had only the best interests of Stamford people in mind. 

"My job is to find out if there was a fundamental issue with the way the reval was conducted," Handler said to one particularly riled up resident. "I'm not running for election. I'm leaving in a few months. The mayor's not running again. Who's damage am I controlling? Jay [Fountain], why am I doing this?"

"Because you think it's the right thing to do," Fountain said. 

"And that's the only reason I'm doing this," Handler said.