Controversy has erupted for the umpteenth time over property tax assessments in the City of Hudson. From plumbing contractors to bed-and-breakfast operators, many local property owners are incensed over having their tenative 2010 assessment raised in the midst of a major economic and downturn driven by a real estate crisis.
Some taxpayers have seen raises of over 50%, 100%, 200%, 300% in a single year, and in several cases over 1000% ... even as others have had their assessments reduced. Sole Assessor Garth Slocum was grilled on Tuesday night by the Common Council, and by all accounts it wasn’t pretty.
This site has obtained assessment rolls for Hudson from 1999, 2009, and 2010, and has begun to perform detailed analysis of the trends which are occurring.
In taking stock of what has occurred, it’s essential to sort out the reasonable reassessments from the genuine outrages. Clearly, some types of property are not just more (or less) valuable than others, but are increasing (or decreasing) in value at a faster rate than others.
Big problems arise, however, when such changes are drastic and wildly disproportionate. And any cold, neutral look at the data obtained does lead inevitably to the conclusion that this most recent reval—along with the overall trends over the past decade, spanning several different assessors—contains arbitrary, capricious and unfair valuations, which in effect force some residents and business owners to pay their neighbors’ taxes.
To make an objective analysis of what has happened with Hudson assessments, the first step is to find a baseline for comparison. For the purpose of this analysis, only taxable properties are considered, leaving aside properties owned by the City, County and other public or nonprofit owners who don’t pay taxes, no matter how high or low their assessment runs.
- Citywide, the assessor has increased the value of all taxable properties by 29%.
That 29% is a key figure to keep in mind as we go along, because it sets a baseline for who was raised more or less than the rest of Hudson.
If you were raised more than 29%, then your share of the local tax pie is going to increase even if the City’s budget stays the same. Below 29%, your share would likely go down if that budget remains constant. (A more likely scenario is that future budgets will continue to rise, as leaders use the increased assessments to increase spending, meaning that even those below the average will see tax increases as soon as this year.)
Another decent baseline for comparison is to determine the average and median increases in terms of actual dollar amounts. The median, our high school math teachers wanted us to remember, is different from the average. The average here is the total of everyone’s assessment divided by the total number of taxable parcels. The median is the middlemost item in a top-to-bottom list of all the taxable parcels. Anyone above the median is higher than 50% of the other property owners, anyone below it is lower than the rest.
- The average proposed increase this year in a taxable Hudson property’s value is $41,997.
- The median proposed increase this year in a taxable Hudson property’s value is $12,600.
That large (more than threefold) discrepancy between the median and average is telling, as indicates that a relatively small number of property owners are picking up the bulk of the increased tab. In other words: though 75% of property owners saw an increase, most are far under the average, meaning the big increases far outweigh the smaller ones.
So having established that baseline for comparison, the next obvious
question is: Who got disproportionately whacked in this reval... and who escaped the assessor’s bat?
In the second installment of this series, we’ll take a peek at some of the big winners and losers in the 2010 round of reassessments.
