To the editor:

In his recent letter, Councilor Brier is wrong on annual assessments, Gary Morse accurately states that “full walk-through revaluations are currently limited to every nine years for a good reason. They are expensive and a huge pain.” I completely agree with his opinion. From that one sentence.

The rest of the letter would benefit from clarification.

There is no mention of “full walk-through revaluations” anywhere in my letter, for that same reason. They are burdensome and costly. I’m not sure why the assumption was made that I was referring to that method, and I won’t assume what the reason was. You know what happens when you assume? You can make an incorrect assessment.

About the three listed fallacies… 

• I believe the intent of that statute (RIGL 44-5-23) is to allow for an assessment to be changed if there is a mistake about the property; like it was listed as having a 2-car garage, but actually has a 3-car garage. I’m not a lawyer, but it seems the “specific authority” to which Mr. Morse refers is more specific than he realizes, or we wouldn’t have just spent the past eight months working through the challenges of the recent assessments ordeal.

• I had not claimed subsequent revaluations would correct the problem. In fact, I stated: “Annual town-wide revaluation will not be an all-encompassing solution. After all, a town-wide statistical revaluation is what set these inaccurate assessments to begin with.” There seems to be yet another assumption that industry standards were not followed with our prior town-wide reval. I have no idea if that is accurate, nor does Mr. Morse. What we do know is people in many cities and towns believe their assessments are wrong. Inaccurate assessments are so common that there is a section of state law dictating how municipalities are to manage fixing the inaccuracies. Mr. Morse might believe the General Assembly has perfect assessments regulation, but I believe it can be improved.

• As mentioned above, I did not suggest -- and do not support -- full walk-through revaluations every year. 

I’m not looking to add bigger or more burdensome processes. A statistical update, or some other interim step taken between the triennial assessments timeline, will help ensure we achieve a more accurate listing of assessed values in Barrington. This involves no time or energy from residents. The added cost is expected to be minimal, because while the frequency increases, the volume decreases.

Mr. Morse’s urgency to prove me “Wrong!” is misplaced energy. There’s no need to invent arguments I haven’t made in order to call me out, because I will actually say and do the wrong thing from time to time. And when I do, I’ll admit my error, as I’ve done in the past, and work to make it right. There’s benefit for all of us in that.

Jacob Brier

Barrington