##VIDEO ID:5nWNtLkYzEU## all right welcome to the board of assessors meeting here in North Main Street 382 North Main on Wednesday September 20 5th at 4:30 um in accordance with mgl chapter 38 section 20 um required to ask anyone taping this meeting and elcat is taping and viewing our meeting and we tape our own meetings and no one from the public is here to view our meeting and attend us today is uh board member Hayden Smith chairman Martin Gruden uh director Diane bishop and assistant director Melissa goo and we will table the review of the minutes because we have a member missing today for next meeting which is okay we're moving on to warrants and administrative uh 20124 V motor vehicle exercise commitment number five and am of 81852 50 cents here we go I believe these are going out on Friday and then they're due within a 30-day period so at the towards the end of October what's this for uh this is motor vehicle excise this would be oh you have a cup right behind your computer I don't know if you have any water in it didn't want to see it go I appreciate that hey typically I sign on the last line yeah it doesn't as long as there are as long as they're on there two signatures I'm happy we didn't have that black trade that's we have some uh reports photo motor vehicle excise bement fog amount of 5,747 72 we have an uncollectable motor vehicle excise EV batment for August get this thing off for 2,638 74 this is the group that you lot of uncol but as we mentioned when you signed off that they will still remain marked at the registry and then if anyone goes to renew they will have to um pay whatever pay to play notice account for accountant for August amount of 13406 Boom notice to accountant for September an amount of 81852 for the commitment number [Applause] five and now now we have the la3 sales report looked at it a little bit uh a lot of up and downs on this um the fourth one down is definitely non arms length because of it being purchased by an LLC yeah and they are the LLC like within that family okay it did appear when I looked at the MLS listing I thought it might have even been an a butter a an AB buding family but yeah um yeah just like the one the one above has nothing to do with that one too by the way even though the same name but no that's not a real sale okay uh fourth one down um condo had a pretty normal value land sales um was two four six the seventh one down was that on MLS do you recall um two three four five the 0971 uh I did write not uh an on it not on the MLS yes that's uh he bought from his uh that person bought from his grandmother or grandfather um actually what this a friend of my son so that's I would Mark that as an non- arms LED also and got a new neighborhood going Market is still a little nutty I did put on Facebook but not for mean meow that the highest over asking I've seen was $180,000 listed for $450 so for $630,000 cash in Northampton I don't put the address I didn't put the MLS number but it's an alltime record of what I've seen wow it's amazing yeah 180,000 over is that just a failure to list it at a high enough price I think so because it's above the center it's in a good location and it has five bedrooms and I have a feeling sometimes A Smith Kyle is someone whose daughter might have went there going like we could rent this out so I think it was underlisted but 180,000 over cash of course 77 on that second one from the bottom don't like that house either wow that's all I have for la3 any questions Hayden no Diane you're all set with that I am all right on to uh building building permits uh fre new dwellings 20 year to date so we're definitely picking up over last couple of years what um oh yeah but they're not built yet cuz I drove down so two single families in a condo yes okay and lots of insulation yeah well insulation is mass safe I yeah and I notice that every time there's a new house that is purchased within a month's time there's a permit for insulation so I'm I'm sure that it's being I don't want to say targeted but I'm sure that mass mailings are going out to anyone who recently purchased okay um and some of them are even newer homes that I would think wouldn't have as much of an insulation issue as our older ones but yeah I was on here this list two months ago so uh that's it couple of solers 53 I did a solar seminar that we don't need to bring that up here but that's it for permit any questions Hayden I'll set with that yes sir all right director's report from Diane Bishop so the second quarter legal file um was forwarded to the tax collector and um it got out very early and they should already have been in people's mailboxes because we started receiving phone calls on Monday uh these tax bills are due by November 1st and then our um actual tax bill once we get the um values approved and the tax rate approved will be going out at the end of this year yeah uh I remind people that tax payments fall under the collector's office and the collector's office is still at the Town Hall in the center of town uh chapter 61 61a 61b applications for fiscal 26 will begin accepting these on October 1st uh and the deadline for this annual application for anyone under any of those forestry agricultural or recreational programs um has changed from October 1st to December 1st we will be sending out postcard reminders to the current applicants as a reminder um FY 25 real estate exemptions We Begin accepting those applications starting November 1st and the deadline is um April 1 of 2025 but we encourage people the sooner they get their applications in and we can put them before the board um the quicker it'll show up on their tax bill and that's what people like to see that their exemption is actually on their tax bill and our fiscal 20 boat commitment just came in this week uh we are now uh Kenne is responsible for uploading um the boat excise we do have to review the list and Whittle down because you cannot tax a boat that's under 16 1 12 ft uh and so we get a list of every single boat uh and we only assess boats that are legally registered so we will be processing that most likely a gen next meeting you'll get a a boat um commitment warrant to sign off uh I do want to remind people that they should be submitting by August 1st each year a form of list for their boats so we know where the boat is mored um if they do not file one of these forms of list and they come in after October 31st and say I don't have this boat anymore there's no abatement that will um be able to be processed to adjust that bill how many usually fall in this category we usually have about a 100 okay bills in our town all righty and that's all I have while short update thanks Diane moving right along and open session we have a schedule of 2012 uncollectable motor vehicle excise and the amount of 29645 as it was last meeting we had 2011 motor vehicle excise um that we were asked to Abate as uncollectible and as I remind you each time that they are remain marked at the registry if somebody does try to register a vehicle or get a new license and they have a mark at the registry they will not be allowed to do any actions at the registry until they have paid anything that is owed to a municipality relating to excise all right sign that up uh next up is crumbling Foundation policy review and clarification um I so we looked into something else I didn't know we were doing this I was looking in for a depreciation what did we change here that was exactly what this is this is yes we were looking to clarify the total depreciation total depreciation and I know that you're still working on right reviewing that but we're not changing the uh percentage amounts no the I was looking to only um make sure that we had one sentence in there that said the total depreciation applied to a home with confirmed crumbling Foundation shall not drop below the 75% depreciation level with the exception of level E which would could drop to 100% right do we have a level E at the present time no we do not have um a level and we have one or two level D's correct I we have three three so we got to look at three level D's and they get 75% off their building value correct uh before depreciation or after depreciation so that is the question um that we got to work on right all right um we have one property that I know I've been doing the 75% depreciation 25% good but if you also take into consideration their physical depreciation of their home they would be 3% good and the home that they are still currently living in and enjoying and occupying would be worth $122,000 right so that's why I'm trying to get the clarification because we know that the utility of this building is more than $112,000 and I just want to have it clarified in in our policy so moving forward anyone that comes that sits in your seats or our seats we follow the same policy um as homes are getting older just go remind me give me that address after we're done okay I got to check it out y okay so we're still up in the air on that so we'll table it until our table till we figure it out okay and moving on to adus yes um I know that you had asked me to put um adus or accessory dwell you have affordable just let you know on this thing not accessory oh then my bad okay just want to make sure we're the same uh yes at Adu um ACC accessory dwelling units and um you had asked that I put this back on the or put it on the agenda to have a conversation and this accessory dwelling unit um units are now by right due to recent um inact uh the governor um enacted a law that people can have um accessory dwelling units it does not go into effect until February 3rd of 2025 I do know that the planning board um is currently working on a bylaw and the director of planning Rob wasel uh presented to the planning board at their recent meeting a PowerPoint presentation so as they're moving forward um they have information to craft um a new bylaw uh it was very informative so if anyone has an opportunity they can watch the September 17th planning board meeting it starts around 53 minutes and you can see the PowerPoint presentation you could watch the whole meeting it was very informative but this particular area starts at 50 where was he from speaking of it he's our planning director oh okay and so it can be detached and or attached yes it can it cannot be any more than 900 square ft correct it cannot be any more than 900 square ft or 1/2 the size of the main house whichever is smaller and uh we still have to adhere to zoning requirements we have we do not have to have any more than one additional parking they are prohibited from short-term rentals but they cannot prevent the adus from becoming a rental unit and there's no occupancy requirement that um is attached to it and the town cannot deny or prohibit someone from um having a accessory dwelling unit on their property right but it's kind of premature for us to really be having a conversation yet because I think we need to let the planning board you know start formulating ideas and bringing it to um at one of their meetings and at that point I also believe that the Department of Revenue division of local services will be providing guidelines for assessors to follow because this will be something uh new and we're going to have to learn how we really have to address it when it comes to sales if we have to change coding that type of things so they're coming yes so we will keep this um you know in the backs of our mind and as soon as we have more information we'll certainly right but it's a state law but we have still have to abide by locals some local stuff correct yeah the uh uh pass it's very popular in California they passed the law in New York and New Jersey but not Connecticut so adus are coming Nationwide y um all set there all set um fisc 25 valuation review including the following and so sales report so we're going to go through all of the reports and that was what is in our um manila folders and I've labeled each excuse me I've labeled each Report with a number so as we're discussing them the board will be able to know which um report that we're reviewing so just to start off at our last meeting um the board discussed the direction of our fiscal 25 assessments and this discussion also um had our consultant present at that time reviewing all of the sales from 2023 for SEO family homes our median was at an 89% assessment to sale ratio and we know that Massachusetts Department of uh the Department of Revenue requires us to be at 100% market value so when you do go to 100% Market value in a any Community houses are not identical if it was a cookie cutter community in every house identical we could be at exactly 100% but you do have to have um a little wiggle room because everything is not the same so the board said that we would be um trying to Target about a 95% 96% would bring us up to a 7% and at that point um we can start reviewing the la3 sales report so this is the list of all of the sales and this is totally from all the Deeds that we've received right so these including arms length and non- arms length correct and you sale sorry so the code uh towards the more right hand side where it says current year non or n code anything that has a letter there is not included in with the um valuation process because we do code those out anything else is within and we have to then determine where our values are what our medium is and we had already discussed it was at an 89 and we did bring it up and right now our median really fell about a 94 in order to get it a little bit higher we would have been over what the board wanted and so at a 94% for single family homes they're still going to be seeing on an average of about a 5.6% increase when it comes to valuations so this first report is basically the la3 sales report from the deeds and we will have to have the assessors log in once it's been discussed and um decided to sign off in the DSL gateway um it will have to be signed off on and I'm really hoping that this evening it can be signed off if you have your usernames and passwords um they no longer allow me to do it on the behalf of the board right um I do and this is probably just being old school I like to have signed copy or people sign off on a hard copy to keep as a record um and I do have a copy that I um made l oh sign that one too okay right and if you'd like to wait I don't know if you need more review or discussion um but again the sales are the sales we we can't make people change their sales it was willing buyers and willing sellers we say under no duress but many people feel they were under duress because there's not a lot of houses out there yeah and they're always having bidding wars to try to be able to secure a home for their family do you want this back or put it here you can put it right there if you don't mind so the next one label number two is the inim year adjustment report and this report gets populated simply by uploading that la3 sales report so once all that um la3 is uploaded this gets populated with no further information um or or help from myself so you can see that we have um a median uh assessment to sale ratio for 101s out of 94 we do have a 95 assessment to sale ratio for 102s and then we have many um all the other classes they vary you don't have a lot of sales it's really hard to bring everyone up to a 95% but the um state does allow us to be within 5% of your major class of property and our major class is single family home so we have to be within 5% of the 94% median at the present time so just so the board has a little understanding once the depreciation tables were adjusted the base rates were updated the overall median ended up at that 94% um we now have the if approved the fy2 average single family home assessment is going to be $392,900 and that is up um 20,300 less than I thought I thought were going to go over four or so um from fiscal 24 yeah and it is a 5.4% increase so our residential condos that increase went up to the 95% but it's a little bit skewed because we have res residential condos but having two complexes one complex increased more than the other complex so they all went up at a 95% but the field at chestnuts really saw an increase of approximately 8% and the Elms saw hardly any increase whatsoever so this is another form that will have to be signed off by the board in the DSL gateway system and I do have a hard copy but if you have any questions please let me know any questions Hayden no okay so the next report is I've got it labeled as number three yeah and that's our l for classification or our assessment and this is as a result of all the changes based on the 20123 sales um these are our assessments lumped into categories so you can see the total residential single family um you can pick out whatever you can see personal property uh again once I pop this in it just automat automatically gets uploaded and this is what we're going to be presenting to do as our new value base you can see that our new value base foral and personal property is at uh 2,846 098 700 two billion yeah what did I just say million yeah well you know million billion billion so at that point if you have any questions and if you do not if you wouldn't mind signing I'd be more than happy to um after the meeting to stay if anyone can you just sign for both of us so all right you do have a number four and number four kind of goes with the number three but this is just a report showing you the comparison from last year to this year so this is something that I always review because when I'm reviewing this I need to be able to document when the do field advisor reaches out and says well why did this change and why you know that type of thing so the first thing that jumped out at me when I looked at it was like huh our parcel count is exactly the same for single family homes and we have new homes built but we also had several homes that were demoed as they were making way for new subdivisions wow um very odd yeah it is odd so we didn't have that many new homes last year not so there was actually five homes that are new but five 101s that are no longer 101s um which is made sense to me at that point and so I have no um worries when the um be the adviser reaches out because I will be able to document so again it's just a recap you can see on the last page or page three of three um the residentials on overall was up 5.6 the uh commercials 8.2 the indust Ral 3.8 and personal property at 9.4 we did see large growth in personal property mostly in the utilities it accounts for the largest portion of it so our values went up like 5.6% so just let the public know that the values will be coming out they someone up four five or six % and then naturally on the spread everyone's a little different I saying naturally if anyone did any new construction or Renovations there's not only went up the on the average 5% but it also went up in addition to any um additional Renovations or new construction to their home this does not need any signatures it's more informational okay and then we have our number five report which is our La 13 um which is our um New Growth and I was really concerned about New Growth this year because we did not have a lot of construction um I do know that we had about I had a sticky note here and I don't know where it went but we had about $350 uh 50,000 worth of residential but we had 200,000 in uh you uh personal property and of that $200,000 of growth in personal property it was approximately 150,000 was utilities so our new growth is 51,800 82 and that is preliminary uh the adviser from do has to now go through and scrutinize and if he deems that anything is not what he considers New Growth it does have to be removed is that on I don't see that is that on five or six on five it's in the very bottom line on five near your oh right here yep okay more than I thought more than I thought I did a couple hundred thousand so the personal property really was a factor I know I spoke very necessary yeah the personal property was almost as much as all residential I know I spoke with our Municipal Finance director and because I did not know at the budget process time what type of personal property growth we would get and I did say I did not think we were going to get as much in New Growth as in the past and egg on my face with personal property right well the 282 like we're looking at for residential is a lowest absolutely and I don't even know when absolutely 10 12 15 years and we did get a good amount in that should go up though for next year for sure as long as they start building yeah start building um even even commercial surprised me be but all of a sudden we have quite a few new buildings going up um so that's unusual yeah so I really did not anticipate um what we did yes new growth is good and if it is good I would appreciate if you could sign off on that document and again this will also have to be individually signed off in the gway and excuse me uh the last report I have is uh it's number six and all this is is an overview it's a threeyear average uh again informational purposes only but it just goes and shows you the value changes and the three-year growth that's on six yes on number six so you can see where are average um FY 25 home single family home value is coming in you can see the threeyear average at the top of the page so oh so here I see what you're saying and keep in mind that these numbers are also what impacts our um equalized evaluation assessments the eqv uh when we get that report and the eqv of affects what is distributed to the town on the cherry sheet amongst other things right all right great lot of reports yes value is up 5 and a half% for res single family so I believe that you've sign uh you've physically signed up on all and again just the requirement of actually doing it in DSL gateway and I will stay after if anyone has their passwords if not we can follow up with you tomorrow okay yeah I'm signed in right here oh awesome so your la3 forms is what you want yep so if you go in and you do your la3 and then you go to I believe it says sign let's see or you go in and you scan down and it'll say accessors and if you check the box your name will automat ially default and then you would just save it I do not believe you have a submit button but if you do please do not submit because we have to submit these um forms in an order and we need to have enough signatures to constitute uh a legal submission and at that point I think I think you are done I think that's it for that is it for uh Open Session I believe and I will make a motion to go into executive session to discuss motor vehicle and boat abatements and an ATP update and to record Open Session votes uh all those take a roll call vote Hayden Smith I'm in favor of that Martin GR yes