To the editor:

When I read your recent news story entitled "Council pushing for annual assessments," I initially thought it was an early April Fools' spoof. In fact, it reported an actual town council session that was an epic embarrassment.

First, the Council introduced a resolution that requested the General Assembly to give Barrington the power to use in future years the discredited "sales chasing" method of valuation that the town tax assessor adopted for the first time, without authority, in 2018 -- the very method that the town solicitor has opined was illegal and would not survive a court challenge.  

Then, one of the council members exclaimed her support for that misguided resolution by exclaiming "Bravo", the dictionary definition of which is "an expression used to show pleasure and admiration when someone has done something well."  

Did she think that it was a job well done when the resolution would have perpetuated the blatantly discriminatory and illegal assessment method that the assessor had contrived?

Fortunately, in the nick of time, Councilor Brier saved the day, beginning with the question of who had drafted the proposed resolution. All of the other council members and the town manager at that point experienced collective amnesia: none of them purportedly could remember. (That led to a revision of the resolution to eliminate the rubber-stamping of the assessor's "sales-chasing" method.)  

So what is the answer to the mystery of who authored it, which could tell us a lot about the motivation behind it? The resolution itself bears the filename and path "H:\Town Clerk\Doc\Resolutions\Resolutions 2020\Resolution re yearly valuations.docx". It would not require a computer guru in town hall to identify whose library that is. Then one could right click on the file, select "Properties" and see the metadata identifying who authored the resolution, when, etc.  A 2-minute exercise! (The publicly-available file on the town website has been converted to pdf format, which appears to have scrubbed out the "Properties".)  

Does the council ever intend to abandon its Mickey-the-Dunce routine, and give us a straightforward answer to Councilor Brier's question, or will it continue to maintain a stance that is the antithesis of open government? Of course, one could speculate that the author was the person who personally has the need for the greatest amount of face-saving in this mess.

But there's more.  

The Council then proceeded to a supposed mathematical justification for seeking authority to conduct annual statistical revaluations in Barrington (which would be unique among R.I. cities and towns). Briefly, the numbers presented do not withstand analysis, based on the town's own published reports. The council claimed that by extrapolating from properties that had sold in 2018 for more than $100,000 over their last assessment, there was at least $200 million in "lost valuation" town-wide in 2018 alone.  

That figure would become more than $400 million that disappeared into a rabbit hole in the 2 years between statistical revaluations. How is that possible? It's not. It didn't happen.  

I have looked at the total real estate tax roll each year from 2010 to the present, and discovered that the total town-wide real estate value increased annually on the order of just $20 million a year (and in some years actually declined, year-to-year). 

It is not remotely plausible that in 2018 alone, over $200 million of valuation was "lost." And of course, if $400 million had really gone "missing" in 2017 and 2018 (representing nearly 15 percent of the town's total real estate value), heads should roll in town hall -- immediately.

The council also promoted the fallacy that annual statistical revaluations would be the magic solution to the "missing" $400 million of valuation. That is ridiculous.  

I have looked at the most recent years in which actual statistical revaluations were performed, and found that they produced only modest increases over the assessed value total from the immediately prior (non-revaluation) years, generally on the order of $20 million -- not the "phantom" $200 million annually that the council came up with for 2017 and 2018. And because the claim of a $200 million annual shortfall is erroneous, so is the council's representation that other taxpayers are paying excess taxes of 7 percent.

As for the properties that apparently sold in 2018 for as much as $574,000 over their last assessment, who would credibly believe that a single house appreciated that much in a single year and therefore needs to be immediately reassessed, as the council suggests? It is far more likely that the pre-2018 valuations of those properties were based on the assessor's grossly inaccurate property description cards. After all, the town has acknowledged that "The accuracy of property records in the assessing department is one of the most important elements of a sound and credible system of assessing."  

And to the extent that property description cards are wrong, it cannot be disputed that no statistical revaluation would ever close the gap of the supposedly "missing" assessments. Not to belabor the point any further, but the valuation literature also recognizes a dozen legitimate reasons why the selling price of a property would not be equal to its assessed value, unlike the council's presentation, which assumes that they are lockstep identical.

Furthermore, it is remarkable that the council's proposal for special treatment for Barrington says absolutely nothing about the added cost burden of annual revaluations. 

How many more employees will need to be on the town payroll? 

How much additional money would have to be paid to outside consultants? 

What would be the added cost of dozens of additional assessment appeals, 2d-level appeals and court challenges every single year? (I seem to recall that the last revaluation suit cost Barrington hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees alone).  

And how about the cost to the town of assessments that would have to be immediately reduced based on below-assessment sales prices during recessionary periods, at a time when the town would likely already be cash-strapped? This would not be a "free" new program, by any means. 

In short, the council just had a spectacularly bad night.  

I certainly hope that our General Assembly delegation never allows the resolution to see the light of day. Yearly statistical revaluations in Barrington would be a solution to a non-existent problem.

Matt Medeiros

Barrington