Hi,
Last fall, I looked into secession and any
other way of reducing our tax “burden” on the island and found that
we have few viable options. I did speak to a lawyer; David Barra of
Unsworth, Barra, & Jarrett, PLC and have a letter from him laying out some
options. Barry also spoke with Jerri (sp?) Seigal a town lister for N.
Hero and found that at that time they were assessing BI frontage at $200 per
foot and mainland at $650 and that we were assessed at “fair market value.”
She also stated that they had removed the “year round occupancy”
prohibition in 1998, so that now – if you meet the State of VT septic standards –
you may live there all year.
It will be interesting to see if the tax
rate is dropping and I plan to call today to find out about this. If they
have not dropped it, and thus our taxes are going up astronomically, then I
think that we need to organize everyone on the island and come up with a plan
to appeal all of our bills.
FYI,
Steve
From: EWHAASE@xxxxxxx
[mailto:EWHAASE@xxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, June 26, 2006 5:27
AM
To: mike_lyons@xxxxxxxxxx;
list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [Butler Island]
New tax assessment
My assessment more than doubled as
well. That alone, however, does not necessarily mean the taxes will
double. When the entire town is reassessed, if everyone's assessment went
up the same amount, no one would see a change in their property tax bill.
The town will simply adjust the tax rate so that they receive the same amount
of tax revenues on a property list that is much more valuable.
Towns are not supposed to make money on a
reassessment. The state requires them to value the properties at fair
market value. Each year the property sales are sampled and based on the
difference between the listed value and the current history of sales (in that
town), the town is supposed to apply that increase to their entire list of
properties in town and adjust the tax rate accordingly. I know that my
assessed value has not changed in many years. I do think, however, that I
could sell my property for what the new value is. Perhaps a bit more.
My concern is that the rest of North Hero
did not increase in value as much as the B.I. properties. We are planning
on speaking to the board about a problem in our assessment, but I don't really
expect much of a change from that.
It is really unfortunate that B.I. is
attached to North Hero and not St Albans.
North Hero is a "gold town" (lots of property value, few kids to
educate) so the tax rate is much higher as we share heavily in the cost
of education with property-value poor towns. And, the non-resident (vacation
home) rate is higher than the regular rate (state-wide) so we get whacked hard.
When you remind the board that we receive
no town services (except for being able to park for the weekend at the town
hall - give me a break!) they say that is reflected in the value of our
property. I tend to agree with them as I know my property would sell for
more if it were on the mainland. I personally think that it being on an
island makes it more desireable, but many people do not.
What to do? I really don't
know. But I do know that we would be better off being part of St Albans or Swanton or even White River Junction.
Anyone know a good lawyer willing to take this one on?
