Invest in Vacant Sterling Land
Tuesday, June 23 2009
Two years ago the Town of Sterling decided to accept the offer of the full time assessor and allow her to charge the Sterling tax payers a per-parcel fee for her assessment duties. That is the equivalent of paying a snow plow driver based on the miles driven. I fought this agreement and after several meetings and discussion, the Town Board held an unscheduled meeting and agreed to her request. The Supervisor told me at the next town board meeting that it was “not her style” to hold un-scheduled meetings but she had no choice and they had to make a decision fast because they feared they would lose their trained assessor. The fear with any employment status that reimburses based on flat rate pay scale is that the employee will sacrifice the quality of the job for the earning potential. I felt that having such an important job as evaluating the value of our property that has a direct correlation to the amount of taxes residents pay should not be handled in this way. It was obvious last spring when some of our town residents faced record increases in their assessments that something was wrong. Not just with the value placed on their property but on the services of our assessor. Grievance night looked like Big Bo’s on the fourth of July, with record turnout. Remember that the suggested course of action is to meet with your assessor prior to grievance night to remedy any misunderstandings and avoid grievance process through negotiation. Residents were given only 15 minutes to meet with the assessor prior to grievance night, hardly time to understand or prepare their paperwork. This is an obvious symptom of an unwilling part- time public employee. This year our nation faced economic hardships that affect every aspect of economy. With this in mind I was amazed to see that my assessment was increased over last year’s very thorough evaluation by the part timer, by almost $2,000. It was not until I read the town board meeting minutes from April that I saw why. It seems that doing individual assessment is too time consuming, so this year the assessor choose to apply a mass increases to all privately owned properties, 2% for lakefront, vacant land 5% and 2% for everyone else. That’s right, swamp land in the town of Sterling did 5%! I should have sold my 401K and got that beaver pond I was looking at! This is more of an accounting practice than a property value assessment. So why pay per parcel? At the time of our re-assessment last year our assessor was working for 3 towns and I found that to be spreading her skills thin and would influence her effectiveness. Today she is listed as having 7 towns with 8,488 parcels! Remember the Town of Sterling was her full time job with only 2,500 parcels. It is time for the board to ask for and accept her resignation.
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