Paul Bass File Photo
Acting Assessor Pullen has an appointment with lawmakers.
Doug Hausladen doesn’t want New Haven’s next major developer to get socked with a tax surprise.
So Hausladen, downtown’s alderman, is calling on the city’s acting tax assessor, Alex Pullen, to come before the board for an “open and transparent discussion” about how the city goes about assessing properties for tax purposes.
He made the request in an Oct. 30 submission to the Board of Aldermen. Click here to read the submission.
Until that hearing, the mayor’s office is keeping the assessor — whose office is theoretically independent of political control — under its aegis. Through a staffer who answered the phone at the assessor’s office Thursday morning, Pullen asked a reporter to call mayoral spokeswoman Elizabeth Benton instead of calling him directly. Benton declined to allow Pullen to be interviewed without her being present in the room.
Hausladen said his proposal was inspired in part by downtowners who are calling on Mayor John DeStefano to create a more “stable” tax environment for people who may be constructing future buildings downtown.
Winfield Davis, executive director of the Town Green Special Services District, raised that concern in a Sept. 19 letter to the mayor. (Read it here.)
Melissa Bailey Photo
Davis’ letter cites the ongoing legal battle at 360 State Street (pictured), where the owners are fighting an eye-popping tax assessment they say came in at four times higher than the expected tab.
Town Green is “not taking sides in the 360 State Street/MEPT tax issue,” Davis wrote. “However, that tax assessment dispute highlights an issue that can affect all property owners and will affect all potential new construction.”
The current tax assessment process “is a point of uncertainty that we as a community must remedy to increase our competitiveness against other towns and cities,” Davis wrote. He called for “the operation and maintenance of a stable tax environment.”
Town Green encouraged “the City and the Board of Aldermen to work with the business community to develop and implement a tax assessment process that more accurately reflects what the tax burden will be for proposed new buildings. When deciding whether to invest in the New Haven community, predictability of taxes will help to spur further development and uncertainty will stifle development.”
Thomas MacMillan File Photo
Hausladen (at right).
Hausladen in August proposed the city enter a tax agreement with 360 State to solve a legal battle between the city and Multi-Employer Property Trust (MEPT), the union-backed pension fund that owns 360 State. The proposal failed to gain traction on the board.
Hausladen said he’d like the city to publicly discuss the tax assessment process so that future developers — including those being lured to revamp the former Coliseum site, the Route 34 corridor and the Mill River area — aren’t hit with “gigantic tax assessment increases” against their expectations.
“We’re going to be asking people to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in New Haven,” Hausladen said. The city should give them a fair expectation of what kind of tax burden they’re likely to pay.
Hausladen said various aspects of the tax assessment process need more explanation.
For one, he plans to inquire about an under-the-radar process by which a private appraisal company the city hired knocked down tax assessments for nearly 500 properties — in some cases allowing the property owners to avoid a potentially costly battle in court.
Hausladen said his proposal will be discussed in a public hearing and workshop before an aldermanic committee. It has been assigned to the Finance Committee. A hearing date have not yet been set.
Thanks to the incompetence of our officials, we are now left with an empty trash filled lot on the corner of Orange, and fewer jobs. The high tax means that the stores may close soon as well. Ironically, this mistake ultimately translates into even higher taxes on the City's residential neighborhoods.