##VIDEO ID:AJBDJx_PnGQ## [Music] okay I'm going to call to order the board of assessors meeting for Monday December 2nd at the Lakeville uh police station in the first uh well the first order of business which uh isn't on the agenda but I'd like to publicly acknowledge that one of our assessors our Board of assessment has uh qualified for the World Championships uh in E France in the fall of 2024 triathon Iron Man Triathlon so congratulations very nice thanks good job Elite athlete in like uh okay uh tax classification hearing which is agenda item number two uh we're going to have uh Dave golden with r presented to us and then we need to have a recommendation uh regarding split or single tax rate to the board of Selectmen which we will present later on this evening so Dave take it away thank you Mr chairman uh you have you folks have a number of items in front of you uh the most important which is the this document entitled tax classification hearing uh this is what I plan to uh present to the select board tonight uh this is what we do every year in advance of the mailing of third quarter tax bills uh this hearing is uh to set your tax rate for fiscal year 2025 um the uh there are a number of steps that we go through um in order to get to this place uh before the classification hearing we go through um the um determination of property tax levy that's done through your town meeting uh and your town staff uh through the budgeting process uh I work with the do to uh determine assessed valuations tabulate uh assess valuations by class and get certification for those values um once I have that um and uh our our certified New Growth uh we're able to proceed with the hearing which is what we're going to do here tonight um once the uh select board votes on uh a tax shift Factor uh I'll go ahead and submit our tax uh rate recap um which will be the final step before getting our uh certification for a tax rate for fiscal year 25 uh some terms that uh I think are important for you folks to know is the levy so the levy is the amount that's uh raised through property taxes uh this amount is determined through the budget um the total amount of approved budget uh less revenues from other sources such as motor vehicle xze Municipal fees um any kind of state aid that's uh given by the Commonwealth uh the town this year is planning on raising 3,111 3459 in property tax revenue uh the levy ceiling is uh 25% of the full value of the entire town uh based on our fiscal year 25 aggregate valuation of just over 2.9 billion uh the town cannot Levy taxes in excess of 72 m732 718 that number is uh where you wouldn't be able to even exceed through an override process you will you every year raise much much much much less than that uh in um in property taxes less less than half as you'll as you've seen here uh our new growth Revenue uh has been certified uh by the do at 21,561 this comes from any kind of new taxable property uh it's a lot of small things like decks and sheds and you know gazebos and things like that but it's also larger scale things like uh new apartment buildings new single family residences new commercial space and so forth uh the levy limit uh this is also referred to uh variably as uh maximum allowable Levy uh this is calculated by adding 25% to last year's Levy limit adding certified New Growth uh in any 2 and 1 half overrides um that have been voted on by the town this year the maximum allowable Levy for 2025 is certified at 30,44 4,072 uh an excess Levy capacity is the difference between uh your uh your Levy limit and the levy to be raised uh what what uh follows in the in the tabulation below is how this all plays out so you can see that uh our fiscal year 24 limit was uh 28.1 million uh 2 and2 percent increase to that is about 73,000 our new growth Revenue this year is 21,561 uh we you folks have approved debt exclusions of 1.033 million uh which brings our uh maximum allow Levy as I said to 30 m147 uh the excess Levy capacity that's being left on the table this year is uh just about $2,700 uh which means again that we're raising $3,111 3459 uh to get our TA our estimated tax rate you take the levy to be raised you divide it by the townwide value and you multiply by a th000 uh that brings us to $10.35 Just for information purposes uh your fiscal year 24 Levy was 29.1 n million uh we're raising about 920,000 more than that this year that's about a 3.2% increase uh year over year uh I've given some information about the uh various property uh classes of property here you can see that uh 88.3% of our um our uh Town's valuation comes from residential property uh meaning that our uh commercial industrial and personal property only accounts for about 11.7% of uh the townwide value um it's important to know this because uh municipalities uh have the ability uh to offset their um their residential tax burden by shifting over uh the burden over to commercial industrial and personal property uh Lakeville has traditionally not done this um you have such a small commercial industrial and personal property tax base that it would it would take approximately 7.54% increase to the commercial tax rate uh in order for there to be a 1% reduction um in the property tax burden for residential taxpayers um I've made an assumption in this uh and if you folks decide not to accept my recommendation I will change that assumption before bringing this to the select board uh my recommendation is that uh that you folks recommend to the select board that they continue to um pursue a single uh tax rate rather than a split tax rate I'm going to shift away from that document for just a second to look at this colorful document uh this is what the various options are for Shifting the tax burden uh you can see the top line where uh in the uh colored portion of the chart where it says CIP shift and res Factor both of those numbers are are at 1.0000 uh that's how you that would is how you would yield a single tax rate of 10.35 uh on the far uh right set of columns that are in white uh you'll see that the uh using a single tax rate it's about $5,900 um tax bill for the average tax value for the average uh value property um in Lakeville uh for commercial it's about 177,000 for uh industrial it's about 32,000 and for personal property it's about 2,200 if you were to go down to the blue line that 1.08 factor for the CIP shift and the corresponding 0.989 for residential Factor that's how you that that's where you start to see that 1% difference in uh for the for the residential taxpayer uh you you'll see that it doesn't really make much much of a difference the taxes have only dropped less than $60 or just about $60 in this case uh for residential taxpayers but for for commercial folks it's gone up $22,000 or about 144 $1,500 for industrial it's gone up um just about $2,000 uh 2600 um and for the the personal property folks it's uh gone up up about uh $400 $200 so it takes quite a large shift over to commercial industrial and personal property in order to even see any kind of um noticeable difference for residential taxpayers and then if you go down to the bottom of that chart um I I give a a little summary of what the tax uh savings would be for uh for residential folks or the increase for commercial industrial and personal property if we were to go at the highest factor which is a CIP shift of 1.5 you can see that uh the uh the residential folks only um benefit uh from a $395 decrease in their uh their tax bill um it's it's about a 6% decrease for them uh whereas the indust the the commercial industrial and personal property uh folks are walloped uh they they'll be uh they'll be seeing uh an over 8,000 increase uh for commercial an over 16,000 increase for industrial and over 1,00 um increase for personal property so given that there's even at the highest level uh not a ton of benefit to the uh folks who are um who are um residential taxpayers uh I continue to recommend that you go at a a single tax rate other questions about those options um just for your information as well uh the um the uh at the single tax rate we will be lower than uh all of our neighboring towns either were last year or are certified at this year uh for residential tax for residential tax rate so I I still think it's fair and and if I'm a business owner and I look at um I look at uh you know say Rochester where I could go and get a commercial tax rate of $10 82 whereas in in Lakeville I'm facing an over $111 uh tax rate um uh on that blue line or at the highest level I'm facing a $15.52 tax rate uh I'm going to I'm going to consider whether or not I want to continue to do business here so a lot of times we see we see communities that are considering this uh realize that because they have such a small a small commercial industrial and personal property tax base they risk uh driving those who are already here out and preventing new businesses from coming in so that's why that's why I recommended this rate I put that that table together at the request of the select board so I wanted to share it with you as well uh So based on the uh on an above shift factor of uh 1.0 uh we would calculate the tax rate to be at 1035 uh it was 1055 uh last fiscal year uh this could change by a penny or two depending on the final certification from the Department of Revenue so this is just an estimated tax rate um in terms of how it impacts uh the average taxpayer uh you can see in the tax impact section that uh last year our our uh average single family valuation was $50,500 uh the taxes at $10.55 per thousand for that valuation would be 5808 uh this year uh we would see a tax rate of uh 1035 and an average valuation of 5 572,000 um the corresponding uh tax obligation would be 500 $ 5,926 that's an increase of $118 or 2.03% which is fairly marginal uh the next section is just a summary of where all your um your values are coming from the most notable thing here is that virtually all of your value is in single family homes in Lakeville uh 2 point 288 billion of the uh 2.99 billion is in your uh single family class um so assuming that you folks recommend to the select board I will say that you have recommended that uh they they continue to uh select a single tax rate and I've given them a draft uh Motion in order to get to that so with that I'm happy to answer any questions that you guys to have I just have a couple quick ones go forward um it's minor but why would the town not elect to collect the full amount allowed it's why are they leaving 2,700 bucks on the table uh that is not a question for the assessors okay this curious on that um and then when you do this presentation to the select board will this um document be visible to the people watching it that's what we're going to try to set up yeah okay cuz I think it'd be good um refresher on what we've tried to get across to people for yeah this since we had the issue the fact is when you see the the uh tax impact the average valuation of a single family house in town went up 4% but the average tax increase was only 2% and that's the example of when values go up right if you're still collecting the same amount you're going to ler the tax rate so the amount collected y didn't go up as much as the values went up right so it' be nice to show that in a visual form uh the only comment I would add is I I do agree with the recommendation to keep the single tax rate uh because looking at these numbers almost no matter how you slice it um going to a split tax rate only um it only disadvantages our opportunity to potentially gain additional businesses and and probably threatens uh other businesses from potentially moving um at some point uh like you had pointed out the the it's going to take a heck of a lot um of an increase on the commercial industrial side personal property side in order to realize any real significant um savings for the uh for the residential so um unfortunately you know with 88% um residential versus a very small amount of commercial doesn't leave us a lot of other options um in my opinion for what that's worth so I'm in agreement with that any other comments questions nope would anyone like to make a recommendation um or make a motion that we recommend to the board of selecting because that's all it is for the record it's a recommendation to the board of Selectmen they are actually the governing Authority that decides whether we keep a single or go to a split tax rate so we we perform the administrative duty of putting this this information together presenting it making our recommendation for what it's worth and they ultimately make their decision so the motion would be a recommendation to either keep the single tax rate or entertain looking at a split tax rate I'll make a motion to keep the tax rate a single tax rate second there second any further discussion all in favor I I oppose motion carries unanimously okay so at this point um I would like to thank David for presenting this to us but I'm going to have to ask you to leave because we are going to go into executive session uh pursuant to General law 38 to comply with or act under the authority of any general law specifically General law 5960 or 20 241b to conduct strategy sessions and preparation for negotiations with non-union person or to conduct Collective bargain sessions or contract negotiations with non-union personnel and we will return to open session so anyone want to make that motion can I ask a question before you make motion yes will you folks all be at the the hearing site I'll be there what time is it 5 so if it's just you you don't need to end this meeting you you you can end this meeting right but if it's if there's a majority of you so two of you then you have to keep the meeting open through the select board meeting so don't adjourn until after the select board meeting okay but if you're going because we don't have another meeting posted right correct yeah okay that's that makes sense yeah don't you is is anyone thank you for pointing that out you're welcome than are you going John I'm going is that John the question is are the one one of you two going I got a coach I won't I have a meeting I don't know how long it's going to be okay so we'll assume your both not going so um okay we are back uh in regular session and I honestly forget the protocol but just to make sure um we're going to adjourn executive session so all in favor roll call vote because it's executive session all of arei L ey a blank eye okay so at this point um we were in executive session talking about um assessment principal Assessment Services for the town and I believe we're at a point based on those discussions to make a recommendation um in regards to next steps and based on our conversation in executive session due to um any of the potential candidates for a staff position within the town um as the principal assessor we would have to would require us engaging um additional outside Services beyond what we have now uh in reviewing the candidates um we didn't feel that they were quite all qualified some not even having proper certifications uh also that the consistency from having backup support if something were to arise where principal assessor was not available due to sickness Health vacation time and whatnot uh we would hope that they outside contract we make sure that they would have backup staff and then um nothing to do with the position itself but from a fiduciary standpoint which we feel we owe to the town that uh obviously there's benefits pension costs and whatnot involved with a on staff person which are not um not needed for an outside contractor so based on that we uh would like to have the town procurement officer go out for um an RFP for principal assessing services and uh get as many qualified organizations or entities to apply our our um to respond to the RFP is someone willing to make that motion so moved we have a second second any further discussion all in favor I I I motion carries unanimously any other business to come before us today if not I will entertain a motion to adjourn the meeting at 4:14 p.m. so moved second all in favor I oppos motion carries meeting adjourned